Everything you need to know about Abu Dhabi’s ever-growing Saadiyat Cultural District

Everything you need to know about

Abu Dhabi’s ever-growing Saadiyat Cultural District

The idyllic Saadiyat Island is about to add a flurry of world-class attractions to its already incredible line-up of museums and art galleries

Louvre Abu Dhabi opened in 2017 (Shutterstock)

Abu Dhabi is now the cultural capital of the Middle East – and it’s all happening on Saadiyat Island. As the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi and Zayed National Museum gear up to open later this year, we take a look at the Saadiyat Cultural District’s wealth of art, history and heritage…

The new Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi

Taking you on a 13.8-billion-year journey through the history of the planet, Abu Dhabi’s Natural History Museum will set itself apart from other museums of its kind by looking at the world through an Arabian lens, with regional landscapes, animals and plants being brought to the forefront. The innovative building, covered in living greenery and designed to look like rock formations, contains headline-grabbing specimens such as ‘Stan’, the immaculately preserved 67-million-year-old tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, and the Murchison Meteorite, containing seven-billion-year-old stardust. Completed with a teaching institute and research centre, it is set to open by the end of 2025.

More new openings

A jaw-dropping Norman Foster-designed building shaped like a falcon’s wings, the Zayed National Museum will tell the story of the UAE and cover 300,000 years of history. Created in honour of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan , the founder of the UAE, and set to open in December 2025, its collection highlights include the Abu Dhabi Pearl, one of the world’s oldest natural pearls, and Islamic manuscript the Blue Qur’an.

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi museum of modern and contemporary art is also set to launch inside an equally spectacular, tubular-style architectural creation by Guggenheim Bilbao architect Frank Gehry. Featuring artists from across the globe, art from West and South Asia and North Africa will be given a particular focus.

Existing attractions

Even without these upcoming openings, Saadiyat Cultural District is already a haven for art and culture enthusiasts. Beautiful outside and in, the mesmerising dome of the Jean Nouvel-designed Louvre Abu Dhabi is inspired by the overlapping fronds of the emirate’s palm trees, and it weighs as much as the Eiffel Tower (7,500 tonnes). Opened in 2017, it was the first universal museum in the Arab world, and alongside its own permanent collection contains masterpiece loans from institutions including Musée du Louvre and Musée d’Orsay.

Meanwhile, Manarat Al Saadiyat – meaning ‘a place of enlightenment’ in Arabic – hosts the annual Culture Summit Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi Art fair, and offers a packed, year-round programme of community cinema screenings, art exhibitions and creative courses. As the only private art foundation on the island, the Bassam Freiha Art Foundation also displays a revolving line-up of art collections, and organises workshops, markets, yoga classes and other free public events.

Finally, the bright, funky and mind-blowingly cool teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi brings a new meaning to interactive art. Intended to push the limits of your imagination and showcase the wonders of the natural world, half the extraordinary installations are ‘wet’ and must be experienced barefoot. Featuring bubbles, spinning orbs, awe-inspiring strobe displays and many other clever ways of using light, sound, space and water, the buzz around its recent opening still hasn’t died down.