Al-Tawiya Tower is a historic defensive tower on the edge of the old fishing village of Al Jubail, one of the few physical reminders of the settlement that existed here before the industrial city arrived in the 1970s. The tower is built from coral stone and gypsum in the traditional Najdi Gulf style, and its thick walls and narrow apertures are characteristic of the defensive architecture common along the Arabian Gulf coast. It stands as a pointed contrast to the glass and steel of the Royal Commission's planned city visible just a few kilometres away — the same shoreline, five decades apart.