Exhibition of the Two Holy Mosques Architecture

This guide to the Exhibition of the Two Holy Mosques Architecture in Mecca opens beside a charred wooden pillar once inside the Kaaba itself, placed there during Abdullah ibn Zubair's reconstruction decades after the Prophet's migration to Medina. From that pillar it moves through seven halls covering twelve hundred square meters, including the old Kaaba door etched with the Shahada, an Ottoman minbar head, and a sultan's lock and key. It lingers longest on the photography hall, where images of the Grand Mosque before its modern expansions wait to unsettle what you assumed about its scale.