We had seen this building under construction a year and a half ago (picture below) and now it seems finished. The doors were unlocked so we went in, although nobody was there and we probably weren’t supposed to be there. We had thought it would be a museum, but it really doesn’t seem that way inside, with a very large reading room through the glass windows to the right (but nothing on the shelves).

Old Diriyah is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the original home of the Saudi royal family, a fascinating place to visit and only about a 10-minute drive from our house. We wanted to see if the UNESCO site was open yet as it had been undergoing restoration for several years. It was supposed to be finished in 2014, then April 2015, and now I think we’ll be lucky to see it before we leave Saudi Arabia in a year. But much work has been done, and the town seems to be reinventing itself in anticipation of a heavy flow of domestic tourists once the site is finished. I took this next series of pictures while walking around parts of the town (at the height of the afternoon heat, I must add!).

The building under construction, from a year and a half ago: