A country · 102 places · 12 regions
Saudi Arabia, all of it.
102 curated places across 12 regions — photographed, mapped, and noted with the season each is best in.
The 4 biggest regions — Riyadh Province, Mecca Province, Eastern Province and Asir Province — read below as chapters, with 8 more waiting past them.
Chapter I · Riyadh Province · 17 places
Riyadh Province
The ancestral home of the Al Saud family on the outskirts of Riyadh, Diriyah preserves the mud-brick ruins of the first Saudi capital, including the At-Turaif palace district inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Wadi Hanifah cuts through the settlement, and the earthen architecture of Najdi style — with its distinctive triangular parapet decorations and geometric surface patterning — is characteristic of the central Arabian building tradition. An ongoing restoration programme is progressively opening new sections of the historic precinct.
via Wikimedia CommonsChapter II · Mecca Province · 13 places
Mecca Province
A seafront fountain on the Jeddah corniche that jets water hundreds of metres into the air over the Red Sea, among the tallest of its kind. Lit at night, it has become a defining feature of the city's skyline.
✦ November to March · $
Chapter III · Eastern Province · 9 places
Eastern Province
Some 2.5 million date palms make Al-Ahsa the largest oasis on the planet — a green sea in eastern Arabia fed by springs, wells and canals refined over millennia. People have lived here continuously since the Neolithic, leaving fortresses, mosques and an ingenious water-management inheritance alongside working gardens and a drainage lake. As an evolving cultural landscape it entered the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2018.
via Wikimedia CommonsChapter IV · Asir Province · 8 places
Asir Province
Established in 1980, Asir National Park protects nearly 450,000 hectares of the southwestern Asir highlands, where peaks exceed 3,000 metres and the landscape receives summer monsoon rains unusual for the Arabian Peninsula. The park encompasses juniper and wild olive woodland, dramatic escarpments, and the Abha plateau at over 2,200 metres — one of the coolest inhabited places in Arabia during summer. Arabian wolves, baboons, and the endangered Arabian leopard are recorded within its boundaries.
✦ March to May; September to November
Regions of Saudi Arabia
Every place in Saudi Arabia
