The 10 Best Travel Experiences in Saudi Arabia

Hegra was the second city of the ancient Nabataean kingdom after Petra, and its more than 100 monumental tombs, carved into sandstone outcrops across a desert plain, survive in far better condition than their Jordanian counterpart.

Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage site opened to tourism only in 2019, and the tombs still show sharp carved detail after two thousand years in the desert.

Jebel Fihrayn, known as the Edge of the World, is a sheer escarpment roughly 1,100 metres above the desert floor, part of the Tuwaiq Mountains that once formed the shoreline of an ancient sea.

A rough 4x4 track and a short walk lead to a cliff edge with no barriers, looking out over a flat desert plain stretching to the horizon, and it has become one of the most visited natural landmarks near Riyadh since the country opened to tourism.

Al Soudah sits near Jabal Sawda, Saudi Arabia's highest point, in the green, cool Asir highlands near Abha — a striking contrast to the desert most visitors expect.

Juniper forests cling to terraced mountainsides, mist regularly rolls through the valleys, and a cable car descends from the plateau edge down toward the valley floor thousands of metres below.

Umluj sits on Saudi Arabia's northern Red Sea coast, where a scattering of uninhabited islands and sandbars sit in water shallow and clear enough to earn the coastline the nickname 'the Maldives of Saudi Arabia'.

Boat trips out to islands like Jabal Hassan reach coral reefs largely untouched by mass tourism, and the coastline remains quiet even as new mega-resort developments rise further south along the same coast.

Al-Balad is Jeddah's old town, a UNESCO-listed maze of coral-stone merchant houses several storeys tall, their facades covered in ornately carved wooden latticework called rawasheen that once let residents watch the street below without being seen.

For centuries this was the gateway for pilgrims arriving by sea for Mecca and Medina, and the district's souqs, mosques, and courtyard houses still carry that trading-port history.

Diriyah was the original capital of the first Saudi state, and the mudbrick palaces and towers of its At-Turaif district, restored and UNESCO-listed, sit above the green Wadi Hanifa valley on the edge of modern Riyadh.

Najdi architecture — thick clay walls, small windows, geometric details — survives across the old quarter, now paired with new museums, cafes, and walking paths along the wadi.

The Farasan Islands are a low-lying Red Sea archipelago off Saudi Arabia's southern coast, ringed by coral reefs that draw divers and snorkellers to waters that see whale sharks pass through seasonally.

The main island holds crumbling coral-stone merchant houses from an Ottoman-era pearling boom, now mostly abandoned, alongside mangrove channels sheltering gazelles found nowhere else, with ferries from Jazan the only way in.

Jabal AlFil, or Elephant Rock, is a sandstone formation carved by wind erosion into the unmistakable shape of an elephant with its trunk lowered to the desert floor.

It's one of the most recognisable landmarks of the AlUla region, set in an open desert valley that turns gold and red as the sun drops, with a small amphitheatre of seating built facing the rock for evening visitors.

The largest continuous sand desert on Earth, an ocean of dunes covering an area bigger than France across the southern Arabian Peninsula.

Some dunes rise over 250 metres, their ridgelines shifting constantly and revealing fossilised lakebeds and ancient artefacts as the sand moves.

Overnight desert camps run by Bedouin-guided outfitters, mostly out of Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter fringes, are the realistic way to experience its scale without a full expedition crossing.

Masmak Fortress is a squat clay-and-mudbrick fort in the middle of old Riyadh, built in the 1860s and the site of the 1902 raid that let a young Abdulaziz Ibn Saud retake the city and begin building what became modern Saudi Arabia.

A spear mark from that battle is still visible in one of the main gate's doors, and small museum rooms inside display weapons, historic photographs, and traditional Najdi architecture around a central courtyard.