On the day before we left Riyadh for good, we were provided with a driver to take us wherever we wanted to go. One place was the National Museum of Saudi Arabia for a final visit.

For anybody who has followed my Riyadh Architecture gallery http://www.pbase.com/helenpb/riyadh_downtown this is a pretty amazing view of the capital city, with the Masmak Fort standing out among all the mud brick buildings. I don’t know what year this was meant to depict, but I don’t think it was all that long ago; I recall seeing pictures from the 1940s looking just like this. Riyadh now has a population of 5 million and has really blossomed in the last half century, and in particular the last 20 years.

The role of oil, posted earlier: