Riyadh
Saudi Arabia's capital and desert boomtown
Riyadh is the seat of Saudi power, a desert capital of close to eight million that has exploded from a walled mud-brick oasis town into a sprawling modern metropolis in a single lifetime. Fueled by oil wealth and now by an ambitious drive to remake the kingdom's economy, it bristles with skyscrapers, ring roads, and vast new megaprojects. It is the political, financial, and administrative center of the Arabian Peninsula's largest state.
The city stands on a high desert plateau in the center of the peninsula at around six hundred metres elevation, in the historic region of Najd, where shallow valleys called wadis cut the arid limestone landscape. Summers are brutally hot and bone-dry, with rare but sometimes torrential winter rains, and the city depends heavily on desalinated water piped hundreds of kilometers from the Persian Gulf coast. Sand and rock stretch in every direction beyond the urban edge.
Riyadh grew from the oasis settlement of Hajr in the region of Najd and became the base from which the Al Saud dynasty rebuilt its rule, made permanent when Abdulaziz ibn Saud retook the town in 1902 and went on to found the modern kingdom. Designated the capital of Saudi Arabia in 1932, it boomed with the oil era and continues to transform under the Vision 2030 program, which is reshaping the city with new districts, transit, and cultural institutions.