THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE

The millennia-old site of AlUla will be turned into a new cultural valley, featuring permanent art installations that blend Saudi Arabia's stunning landscape, human history and global art visions

- Zabrina Lo

As the plane begins its descent, the view outside the window is of a vast desert: there are reddish mountains on the horizon standing tall like an indestructible fortress, and some ancient structures which we would later learn were tombs carved out of a colossal rock, marked at the entrance with curses intended to ward off grave robbers. The flight may have been headed to the oasis city of AlUla in northwest Saudi Arabia. 1,000 km from the capital Riyadh, but nobody would have thought twice if they'd been told they were landing on Mars.

Members of the press and selected artists flocked to the remote desert in November 2022 to get a glimpse of the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU)'s grand scheme. The organisation plans to turn the area, known for its rich natural heritage and archaeological sites, into a modern cultural destination. For decades, oil has been Saudi Arabia's main source of wealth; the AlUla project, established by royal decree in July 2017, is seen as proof of the country's recent ambition to cultivate tourism and leisure as another economic pillar as outlined in Vision 2030, a transformative economic and social reform blueprint for opening up the kingdom to the world.

There has been a broad range of initiatives set up across archaeology, tourism, culture, education and the arts to protect and develop AlUla. Among them are furthering the development of Hegra-Saudi Arabia's first Unesco World Heritage Site where ancient tombs date back to 106CE-as a tourist destination; renewing hospitality facilities in Old Town, a village of more than 900 mudbrick homes built in the 12th century or earlier; and reintroducing indigenous flora and fauna, including the extinct ibex, to the area.