The RCU has also launched a language institute and a tailored scholarship program to ensure proactive community-level engagement. A new milestone in AlUla’s cultural development, the 11-week residency amplifies strategic dialogue and collaboration between local practitioners, artists in residence, and the community of experts working on the ground in AlUla. This past December, the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) and the French Agency for AlUla Development (Afalula) launched the city’s inaugural art residency program. Platforms to showcase creative prowess – both local and international – are coupled with art residencies to empower budding talent from the bottom-up.

This handout image provided by AlUla Desert Polo 2022 championship shows French entrepreneur, and Polo player Jean-Francois Decaux (R) taking part in the tournament in Saudi Arabia's northwestern city of al-Ula on Febr. These include: the Desert X AlUla Winter at Tantoura AlUla Arts Festival, and a host of exhibitions running in tandem. With time at its core, the city relays a holistic narrative – 3,000-year-old carvings stand tall alongside modern art festivals and residencies. Experts estimate that merely five percent of the area’s archaeological riches have been revived. A treasure trove of human history spanning over eight millennia, AlUla has over 23,000 archaeological sites, with only a small number of those already excavated. Long impregnable to global tourism and home to the country’s first UNESCO heritage site, Hegra, AlUla is swiftly penetrating must-do itineraries for travelers seeking the unpredictable. And that’s where AlUla stands out: it offers an immersive experience where history and modernity coalesce, a cultural oasis of galleries, festivals, art pedagogy, and archaeological anomalies. To lament their predictable existence is tantamount to lamenting the popularity of superhero movies – they sell, so they persist.īut while predictable tourism hotspots and superhero films can be good, they’re seldom great. Such predictability is successful, whether through the same upscale dining experiences vaguely mixing Italianate and East Asian dishes or the same gently upbeat music played while consuming them. There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

Both options share a dreary, trendy predictability, supplying the demand for a tepid escape from your average daily routine. For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.įar too many tourist destinations in the Gulf vacillate between sun and sea getaways and posh metropolitan smart cities.

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