King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra)

Snøhetta-designed cultural complex with library, museum and cinema, in Dhahran

The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture — known by its Arabic name Ithra — is the most ambitious cultural building in the Gulf. Designed by the Norwegian firm Snøhetta and opened in 2017, it gathers a library, a museum, an art gallery, a 900-seat theatre, an IMAX cinema, a children's discovery centre and a permanent exhibition on the history of Saudi oil into a single dramatic complex of curved silver volumes that look like enormous pebbles.

The collection is small but smart, with rotating contemporary exhibitions of Saudi and international art and a permanent gallery on Islamic civilisation. The children's museum is particularly good. Entry is free; pre-book online for the more popular galleries on weekends. It is in Dhahran, around 10 km west of central Khobar, easy by car or ride-hail.

things to do sight museum architecture
A story
Ithra means "enrichment" in Arabic, and the building literally rises from the site where the first commercial oil well in Saudi Arabia, Dammam No. 7, struck oil in 1938 — the discovery that transformed the kingdom. The Norwegian architects Snøhetta clad the complex in 350 kilometres of stainless steel tubing that catches the desert light differently every hour.