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.