The Pearl Island

This guide to The Pearl Island in Doha starts inside Porto Arabia's ice lounge, where visitors bundle into gloves and a traditional farwa coat to stand among ice sculptures at nine degrees below zero, just steps from desert heat outside. From there it traces how this reclaimed island, built from nothing after 2004 over old pearl-diving grounds, had to invent a fast identity for its marina restaurants and plazas as tens of thousands of new residents arrived. The island's cost grew from an early estimate of two and a half billion dollars to something far larger by the time it was finished.