CULTURE COOL - UNDER THE EMIRATI SUN

Home to one of the world’s grandest mosques, an exciting emerging arts district on Saadiyat Island and an entertainment hub promising genuine thrills, Abu Dhabi has arrived in the league of extraordinary family destinations

- Prannay Pathak

Something stops me in the tracks as I behold the young Egyptian man with round, obsidian eyes. They seem unable to decide between contempt and concern for the way I tiptoe towards the portrait of the faiyum with a strange two-eyed portal in my hand. I bluff on, unruffled, and complete the perfect vertical dolly shot for the Gram—the ideal heist for this day and age. If you’re familiar with Maurice LeBlanc, you’d say I’m at the Louvre. You would be right and you would be wrong, for I’m not in Paris but lam at a Louvre.

The glass pyramid that makes the French palace, probably, the world’s most recognisable museum, has made way fora dome here—a complex, curving metallic roof composed of innumerable parts and weighing 7,500 tonnes. In many ways, this shimmering cupola made of 7,850 stars, intended by architect Jean Nouvel to shower the museum’s innards with a day long dance of light, has come to symbolise the contemporary cultural face of Abu Dhabi. Situated at the confluence of the sands of Saadiyat Island and the Arabian Gulf, Louvre Abu Dhabi, dubbed an island on an island’, came to exist as the result of a collaboration between France and the U.A.E. in 2007. The institution’s Temporary Gallery holds works of art loaned from two other Paris biggies—the Centre Pompidou and Musee d’Orsay, with a permanent collection that is quite well-endowed too.