
VIA Riyadh
Luxury stone-built compound of shops, cinema and hotel, clad in limestone from the Tuwaiq mountains.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to VIA Riyadh, the Salmani-style compound in the city's al-Hada district, looks past the hotel, cinema and shopfronts to the material they are made of: stone extracted from the Tuwaiq mountains outside the capital. It follows that rock back through deep time, to an ocean geologists place over eastern Arabia, and to the fossils walkers still pick up along the escarpment. Best heard standing close enough to one of the pale walls to touch it.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Edge of the World
Sheer limestone cliffs dropping about 300 metres to an ancient seabed, with fossils underfoot.
Roshn Front
Open-air shopping and dining promenade dotted with stone sculptures from a yearly carving symposium.
Tuwaiq Palace
Fortress-like limestone wall crowned by white tensile tents, hiding an oasis garden above a wadi.
Granada Mall | غرناطة مول
Ring-road shopping centre with over three hundred shops, a cinema, family play zones and a metro link.
Diplomatic Quarter Riyadh
Award-winning desert parkland of native acacias, carved limestone benches and wadi-edge walking trails.
Kingdom Centre
Mirrored-glass skyscraper crowned by a parabolic opening spanned by a walkable sky bridge.