UAE

The world's tallest building at 828 metres, the Burj Khalifa is a feat of engineering so extreme that its spire can be seen from 95 kilometres away and maintenance workers at the top experience a temperature several degrees cooler than those at the base. The At the Top observation deck on level 124 and the private Sky level on level 148 offer views across the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Desert, and the dense carpet of Dubai's urban grid that have no equivalent in the Middle East.

One of the most significant works of Islamic architecture completed in the 21st century, the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque can accommodate 41,000 worshippers and is covered entirely in white Macedonian marble. The main prayer hall houses the world's largest carpet — 5,627 square metres woven by hand — and the largest chandelier in the world, a 12-metre Swarovski crystal piece suspended from a 85-metre dome.

The only surviving portion of old Dubai — built of gypsum and coral in the traditional wind-tower architectural style of the Gulf — Al Fahidi was a merchant quarter dating from the 1890s and is now a network of alleyways, art galleries, and the Dubai Museum in the old fort. Standing among these narrow lanes above the Dubai Creek, with the wind towers channelling the desert breeze, provides a counterpoint of extraordinary authenticity to the surrounding city.

The historic inland city of Al Ain contains six separate UNESCO-inscribed cultural landscapes including ancient falaj irrigation systems, Bronze Age and Iron Age oasis settlements, and the Al Ain Palace Museum — the childhood home of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan, the UAE's founding father. The Al Ain Oasis, covering 1,200 hectares in the city centre, is the oldest continuously inhabited oasis in the Arabian Peninsula.

The ancestral homeland of the ruling Al Nahyan family of Abu Dhabi and the gateway to the Rub al Khali — the Empty Quarter, the world's largest continuous sand desert — Liwa is a series of agricultural villages surrounded by the most dramatic dune landscape in Arabia. The Moreeb Dune, at 300 metres one of the tallest in the world, provides the most spectacular desert experience accessible from the UAE.

The original commercial artery of Dubai, the Creek divides the city between Deira and Bur Dubai and has been crossed by abra water taxis for over a century. The traditional wooden dhows moored along the Deira Creek-side still transport goods to Iran, India, and East Africa, and the labyrinthine Gold Souk nearby — containing more gold jewellery per square metre than anywhere else on earth — makes a visit to the old Dubai an essential counterpoint to the new.