Now, though, the kingdom built on oil wealth, is making a concerted effort to play catch up with other Middle Eastern destinations, aiming to attract an ambitious 100 million visitors by 2030. This is a country known more for its human rights abuses, treatment of women as second-class citizens, and no-alcohol policy rather than for opening its arms to travellers. We are in the AlUla region of Saudi Arabia, 682 kilometres from Jeddah and 1000 kilometres from Riyadh. This is neither your usual bucket-list site nor your average tourist destination. It's just us, 111 tombs carved from boulders as big as buildings, and mile after mile of desert. But while at Petra, tourists flock down a narrow rock cleft to reach the hidden city and are offered a camel or a mule to ride every few paces, here, our group is alone. It was here in the first century BC that the nomadic Nabateans carved ornate tombs from enormous rock structures, just as they did in Petra in Jordan. Its whole 9740 square metres is covered with 3000 panes of tempered glass and it's seriously sparkling.īuilt in 2019, this modern masterpiece couldn't be more of a contrast to the ancient architecture on show at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Hegra, a mere 20-minute drive away. No, I'm not hallucinating, but gazing at the world's largest reflective building, the Maraya Concert Hall. Reality and reflections merge where the building's edges blur with its surroundings. Glimmering in the hazy heat before me is a giant cube, its sides mirroring the landscape's rust-coloured rock formations, carved by the wind over the centuries.

It rises, mirage like, from the desert floor. The spectacular mirrored Maraya Concert Hall.

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