The Most Beautiful Places in the United Arab Emirates
7 places ยท updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in the United Arab Emirates are Burj Al Arab, Burj Khalifa and Sheikh Zayed Mosque. The list covers 7 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
The United Arab Emirates turned a coastline of desert, salt flats and small pearling towns into one of the most ambitious built landscapes of the modern world. Oil wealth from the second half of the twentieth century paid for towers and cultural institutions designed by leading architects, and the flat ground, open skies and strong light favour bold silhouettes. Behind the cities, the sand sea of the Empty Quarter reaches the country's south, with some of the tallest dunes on Earth.
In Dubai, the Burj Khalifa, at 828 metres, has been the tallest building in the world since 2010, its stepped Y-shaped plan inspired by a desert flower. The Burj Al Arab stands on its own artificial island and is shaped like the sail of a dhow, and the Museum of the Future, opened in 2022, is a stainless steel ring whose windows are cut in Arabic calligraphy.
In Abu Dhabi, the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is clad in white marble, crowned by dozens of domes and furnished with one of the largest hand-knotted carpets in the world. Jean Nouvel's Louvre Abu Dhabi sits beneath a vast dome of layered metal lattice that scatters sunlight below like light through palm leaves, and Qasr Al Watan, a presidential palace opened to the public, sets a great central dome above halls of white stone and gold-leaf ornament. Far from the coast, near the Liwa Oasis, Moreeb Dune rises steeply from the salt flats, one of the highest dunes in the world.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Burj Al Arab | Skyscraper | |
| 2 | Burj Khalifa | Skyscraper | |
| 3 | Sheikh Zayed Mosque | Mosque | |
| 4 | Museum of the Future | Science museum | |
| 5 | Louvre Abu Dhabi | Museum | |
| 6 | Qasr Al Watan | Palace | |
| 7 | Moreeb Dune | Dune |
01 Burj Al Arab
United Arab Emirates ยท 13.1 km from Dubai25.141ยฐ N 55.185ยฐ E
Image by keerthichn from Pixabay The Burj al-Arab was designed to be a single, instantly readable image, and it succeeds: a white sail billowing from a mast on its own island off the Dubai coast.
Did you know? There are no ordinary rooms: all 199 units are suites, the smallest about 169 square metres and the largest about 780.
02 Burj Khalifa
United Arab Emirates ยท 2.3 km from Dubai25.197ยฐ N 55.274ยฐ E
Image by JESHOOTS-com from Pixabay 8 metres to the tip of its spire, the Burj Khalifa has been the tallest building on Earth since it opened in January 2010, taking the title from Taipei 101.
Did you know? Builders pumped concrete to a then world-record height of 606 metres during construction.
03 Sheikh Zayed Mosque
United Arab Emirates ยท 12.5 km from Abu Dhabi24.412ยฐ N 54.474ยฐ E
Image by Mariakray from Pixabay The people who planned this mosque weren't going for one look โ they wanted the whole story of Islamic architecture in a single building.
Did you know? The prayer-hall carpet, designed by Iranian artist Ali Khaliqi, has about 2.27 billion knots, weighs around 35 tonnes and was made by some 1,200 knotters.
04 Museum of the Future
United Arab Emirates ยท 0.7 km from Dubai25.219ยฐ N 55.282ยฐ E
ะะปะตะบัะฐะฝะดั ะกะธะณะฐััะฒ ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 Seen from Sheikh Zayed Road, the Museum of the Future looks less like a building than a single polished object: a stainless-steel ring, some 77 metres tall, lying on its side on a planted green mound, with a great oval void through its middle. There are no straight walls and no vertical columns inside.
Did you know? The building rises about 78 metres and holds roughly 30,500 square metres of floor space across seven column-free storeys.
05 Louvre Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates ยท 8.1 km from Abu Dhabi24.533ยฐ N 54.400ยฐ E
Francesco Bini ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 The Louvre Abu Dhabi is a museum built around a single idea about light.
Did you know? Leonardo's 'Salvator Mundi', bought at a record price for a painting and announced for display here, has never been shown; its 2018 unveiling was postponed indefinitely.
06 Qasr Al Watan
United Arab Emirates ยท 6.2 km from Abu Dhabi24.462ยฐ N 54.306ยฐ E
Image by mufaddalap from Pixabay Qasr Al Watan, the "Palace of the Nation", is the working presidential palace of the United Arab Emirates, and one of the few seats of state anywhere designed to be walked through by the public.
Did you know? The Great Hall uses three signature colours: blue for the waters of the Arabian Gulf, white for purity and yellow for the desert sands.
07 Moreeb Dune
United Arab Emirates22.980ยฐ N 53.786ยฐ E
Nepenthes ยท CC BY-SA 3.0 Moreeb Dune (Tal Moreeb) is a single mountain of sand on the northern edge of the Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter, about 25 km south of the Liwa Oasis in the Al Dhafra region of Abu Dhabi.
Did you know? The festival runs from late December into early January and ends with the Moreeb hill climb championship and New Year's Eve fireworks.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented โ the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in the United Arab Emirates?
- On our list, Burj Al Arab ranks first, followed by Burj Khalifa and Sheikh Zayed Mosque.
- How tall is the Burj Khalifa?
- The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is 828 metres tall and has been the tallest building in the world since it opened in 2010. It was designed by Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
- What is the dome of the Louvre Abu Dhabi made of?
- The dome designed by Jean Nouvel is about 180 metres across and made of eight layers of steel and aluminium cladding cut into star-shaped patterns. Sunlight filtering through creates the 'rain of light' effect in the spaces below.
- Where is Moreeb Dune?
- Moreeb Dune stands near the Liwa Oasis in the Abu Dhabi emirate, on the edge of the Rub' al Khali, or Empty Quarter. Its steep face rises around 300 metres above the surrounding salt flats and is used for hill-climb motorsport events.
- What kinds of places are there to see in the United Arab Emirates?
- In our collection, the places in the United Arab Emirates are most often skyscrapers (2), dunes (1), mosques (1) and palaces (1).
- How many places are on this list in the United Arab Emirates?
- The list covers 7 places.