Abu Dhabi: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Abu Dhabi exists because of fresh water found on an island in 1761, and for two hundred years after that it was a village of palm-frond houses living on pearls. This walk is the three hundred metres where all of that still stands: the watchtower built over the well, the palace of the family that moved here because of it, and the quarter the oil money built first. Two hours, all of it in shade or indoors, and the fort and the Cultural Foundation are both closed on Monday.
A short history of Abu Dhabi
According to tradition, in 1761 hunters from the Bani Yas tribe found fresh water on the island and settled there. For almost two hundred years Abu Dhabi was a village of pearl divers and fishermen, with a single fort, Qasr al-Hosn, which still stands in the city centre. The Al Nahyan family rules it to this day. In 1958 oil was found offshore, and from 1962 it was exported; the revenue turned the village into a city of towers. On 2 December 1971 the United Arab Emirates was founded, with Abu Dhabi as its capital and Sheikh Zayed as its first president.
The ten best sights in Abu Dhabi
1Sheikh Zayed Grand MosqueFree, closed to visitors on Friday morning, and abayas are lent at the door
2Louvre Abu Dhabi63 dirhams, closed Monday, and the dome is the reason to come at four
3Qasr Al Watan65 dirhams, a working presidential palace, and the last entry is at six
4Qasr Al Hosn30 dirhams, the oldest building in the city, and closed Monday
5Cultural FoundationFree, next door to the fort, and the children’s library is upstairs
6Zayed National MuseumThe five steel wings above it are solar chimneys, not decoration
7teamLab PhenomenaFrom 150 dirhams, rooms you walk into, and shoes come off at the door
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8Manarat Al Saadiyat
Free, the island’s own gallery, and the model of the whole plan is inside
9Abrahamic Family HouseFree, booked online, and all three houses are the same size on purpose
10BAPS Hindu MandirFree, 50 minutes out on the Dubai road, and no steel was used in it
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Abu Dhabi →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Abu Dhabi:
Free walking tours in Abu Dhabi
The island that had one well
Abu Dhabi exists because of fresh water found on an island in 1761, and for two hundred years after that it was a village of palm-frond houses living on pearls. This walk is the three hundred metres where all of that still stands: the watchtower built over the well, the palace of the family that moved here because of it, and the quarter the oil money built first. Two hours, all of it in shade or indoors, and the fort and the Cultural Foundation are both closed on Monday.
- Qasr Al Hosn · The round watchtower in the middle of the courtyard is the oldest building in Abu Dhabi and it was put up in the 1760s for one purpose: to guard the freshwater well that had just been found here. Everything else grew outwards from it. The white coral-and-plaster palace around it came later, and until 1966 it was where the ruler lived and worked.
- Cultural Foundation · Built in 1981 next to the fort as the country’s first arts institution, closed for over a decade, and reopened in 2018. The courtyard was designed so that the fort is always framed in the opening — the new building was told to look at the old one. It holds the national library and a children’s library that works like a free playground.
- Hamdan Street · This was the first paved street in Abu Dhabi and for years it was simply called the street. The city around it is laid out as a grid of numbered blocks — a plan drawn by a Japanese architect, Katsuhiko Takahashi, in the late sixties, which is why an Arabian capital has a street pattern like a North American one.
- Madinat Zayed gold centre · Gold here is not priced as jewellery. It is weighed, multiplied by the morning’s rate per gram — which every shop has on a screen and all of them have the same one — and then a making charge is added. The making charge is the only thing you can argue about, and it is usually where a third of the price sits.
- World Trade Center Souk · The old central market burned down and what replaced it is a souk designed by Norman Foster: deliberately narrow lanes, wooden screens, light from above and air conditioning you cannot see. It is an argument in architecture — that a market can be shaded and tight and still be new — and it stands on the exact footprint of the market it replaced.
- Corniche · The whole eight-kilometre waterfront is reclaimed land; the original shoreline ran where Hamdan Street is now. The beach is imported sand and the shade trees are irrigated with desalinated water, which costs more per litre than the bottled kind. It carries a Blue Flag, and almost nobody who walks it realises none of it was here in 1960.
Three roofs on one island
Saadiyat Island was empty sand in 2007 and is now the place where Abu Dhabi says what it wants to be. A French museum that paid a billion euros for a name, a mosque and a church and a synagogue built side by side at the same height, a Japanese studio’s rooms of light, and a national museum shaped on a falcon’s wing. Three hours, all indoors, and the Louvre is closed on Monday. Book the Abrahamic Family House before you go; entry is free but by slot.
- Louvre Abu Dhabi · The United Arab Emirates paid France around a billion euros in 2007: about four hundred million of it for permission to use the word Louvre for thirty years and the rest for loans and expertise. Jean Nouvel’s dome is 180 metres wide and made of 7,850 metal stars in eight layers, so that sunlight filtering through lands on the floor as what he called a rain of light. The dome rests on four piers hidden inside the galleries, and from outside it appears to float.
- Zayed National Museum · The five steel shapes rising over the building are not sculpture: they are solar thermal towers, drawing hot air up and out so the galleries below stay cool with far less machinery. They are shaped on a falcon’s wing feathers, because falconry is the thing Sheikh Zayed is most often pictured doing, and the museum under them is about him and about the country he assembled from seven emirates in 1971.
- teamLab Phenomena · The Japanese studio teamLab built seventeen thousand square metres of rooms here where the exhibit is the air and the water itself — vortices, mist, floating light — and nothing is a screen. Shoes come off at the entrance and some rooms are ankle deep in water. It opened in 2025 and it is the largest thing the studio has built anywhere.
- Abrahamic Family House · A mosque, a church and a synagogue, designed by David Adjaye, standing on one platform as three identical thirty-metre cubes — identical on purpose, so that none of them is the host. The synagogue is the first purpose-built synagogue in the Gulf, and the whole thing opened in 2023. Each cube is rotated to face what its own faith faces: Mecca, east, and Jerusalem.
- Manarat Al Saadiyat · This was built first, in 2009, as the place that would explain the island to the people who had to be convinced it was worth building. Inside is a room-sized model of the whole Saadiyat plan with every museum on it, including the ones not yet standing. Entry is free and it is also where the city’s art fair happens each November.
- Saadiyat Public Beach · Unlike the Corniche this beach is the original coastline, with real dunes behind it, and hawksbill turtles still come ashore here between March and June to lay. The hotels on the island are required to keep lights dim and screened in the nesting season, because hatchlings navigate by the brightest thing on the horizon.
Water, palms and a mountain road
This one leaves the island. An hour and a half inland is Al Ain, the oasis town on the Omani border where the ruling family actually comes from, and it is the opposite of the capital: low, green, and old. Date gardens watered by channels cut four thousand years ago, a mud fort, tombs from the Bronze Age, and a road that climbs twelve hundred metres up a bare mountain in twenty-one bends. A full day and a car. Most of the museums there close on Monday.
- Al Ain Oasis · A hundred and forty-seven thousand date palms inside the town, irrigated by falaj — channels that bring water by gravity from the mountains, some of them cut four thousand years ago and still running. Water rights were measured in time: a household owned so many minutes of flow, and the minutes were inherited and sold. Walk in and the temperature drops several degrees immediately.
- Al Jahili Fort · Built in the 1890s and later the base of the Trucial Oman Scouts. Inside is a permanent exhibition of Wilfred Thesiger’s photographs: he crossed the Empty Quarter twice in the late 1940s with Bedouin companions, on camel, and his pictures are the clearest record that exists of this region in the years just before oil changed it.
- Qasr Al Muwaiji · A mud-brick fort around a courtyard, built about 1910, and the house where Sheikh Khalifa — the country’s second president — was born in 1948. The restoration left the old walls as they were and put a glass pavilion inside the courtyard rather than rebuilding rooms, so you can see exactly which mud is original.
- Hili Archaeological Park · The round stone tomb standing in the middle of the lawn here is about four and a half thousand years old, from the Umm an-Nar period, and it was reconstructed from its own fallen blocks. Carved on the entrance slab are two human figures and an oryx. People were buried in it collectively, generation after generation, and the park around it is a municipal garden where children play football.
- Al Ain Camel Market · A working livestock market, not a show. Animals change hands from seven in the morning, sellers shout prices across the pens, and racing camels go for sums that would buy a car. Nobody here is set up for visitors, which is the point; expect to be invited to look and then asked, politely, whether you are buying.
- Jebel Hafeet · Twelve hundred metres of bare limestone with a road of twenty-one bends laid up it in the 1980s, three lanes wide the whole way, and often called one of the great driving roads in the world. At the foot of it are about five hundred Bronze Age tombs. At the top it is reliably eight to ten degrees cooler than the city below, which is the real reason people drive up at four in the afternoon.
Getting to Abu Dhabi and getting around
- Abu Dhabi International Airport · Terminal A opened in 2023 and the taxi rank is 35 minutes from the Corniche
- Central Bus Station · Buses to Dubai every 20 minutes for 25 dirhams, and to Al Ain for 25
- Zayed Port cruise terminal · Where the ships dock, and a free shuttle runs to the Corniche
Cheap eats in Abu Dhabi
Eighty-eight per cent of the people in this country were born somewhere else, and the cheap food shows it: Lebanese grills, Keralan fish curry, Pakistani karahi, Iranian bread. What almost nobody sells on a street counter is Emirati food — it was home cooking, not restaurant cooking, and the handful of places that serve it had to invent the format. A full plate is between fifteen and thirty-five dirhams, bread comes free, and almost everywhere is cash-and-counter with a few plastic chairs.
- Lebanese Flower · About 25 dirhams, open till two in the morning
- Al Ibrahimi · About 20 dirhams a head, and open from six in the morning
- Bait El Khetyar · Syrian grills, about 30 dirhams, and the mixed grill feeds two
- Al Mrzab · About 35 dirhams, and harees needs to be ordered
- Café Arabia · A converted villa over three floors, about 45 dirhams, and the only quiet one
- Mina Port fish counters · From six in the morning, cash, and about 40 dirhams for a whole fish
- Souq Al Mina dates · Khalas and medjool by the kilo, tasting first, and about 30 dirhams
- Al Dhafra · At the port, and the two-hour dhow dinner leaves at eight-thirty
Museums in Abu Dhabi
In 2007 Abu Dhabi signed a deal with France and decided, in effect, to buy a museum quarter rather than grow one. Everything in this list except the fort is younger than twenty years, and most of it stands on an island that was sand. The fort is the exception and it is also the answer to why any of this is here.
- Louvre Abu Dhabi · 63 dirhams, closed Monday, and four o’clock is when the dome works
- Qasr Al Watan · 65 dirhams, and the light show on the facade is at seven-thirty
- Qasr Al Hosn · 30 dirhams, the city’s oldest building, and the well is marked in the floor
- Zayed National Museum · Foster’s five steel wings are chimneys that cool the galleries below
- teamLab Phenomena · From 150 dirhams, and bring a change of socks
- Manarat Al Saadiyat · Free, and the room-sized model shows the museums not yet built
- Cultural Foundation · Free, the national library inside, and the fort framed in the courtyard
- Al Jahili Fort · Free, in Al Ain, and the Thesiger photographs are the reason to go in
Nature and day trips near Abu Dhabi
This is a desert emirate with the largest mangrove forests in the Gulf, a wetland that fills with flamingos, and sand dunes that are made of stone. Everything here has a season: from June to September the outdoors is effectively closed between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon, and several of these sites shut for the summer entirely.
- Jubail Mangrove Park · 15 dirhams, and high tide is when it is worth it
- Mangrove National Park · Kayaks from 150 dirhams, two hours, and the dawn trip has the birds
- Al Wathba Wetland Reserve · Free, closed May to October, and go at seven in the morning
- Fossil Dunes · Free, 45 minutes inland, and sunset is the whole point
- Jebel Hafeet · Free, 1,249 metres, 21 bends, and eight degrees cooler at the top
- Al Ain Oasis · Free, 147,000 palms, and the falaj channels are four thousand years old
- Hudayriyat Island · Free, a long beach and a cliff walk, and the whole island is new land
- Mushrif Park · 10 dirhams, the oldest park in the city, and open till midnight
Things to do in Abu Dhabi with kids
Yas Island is four theme parks in walking distance of each other and three of them are entirely indoors, which between June and September is not a detail but the whole reason they work. A one-park ticket is around 345 dirhams and a two-park ticket is barely more, so decide before you buy.
- Ferrari World · 345 dirhams, and under 1.40 metres cannot ride Formula Rossa
- Warner Bros World · 345 dirhams, fully indoors, and best for ages four to twelve
- Yas Waterworld · 320 dirhams, 45 rides, and the pearl-diving story runs through it
- SeaWorld Abu Dhabi · 375 dirhams, and the rescue centre tour is extra
- Falcon Hospital · 170 dirhams, booked ahead, and two hours
- Al Ain Zoo · 30 dirhams, and the Arabian oryx here was bred back from extinction in the wild
- Khalifa Park · Free, a little train, splash fountains, and shade by six in the evening
- Corniche Beach · 25 dirhams for the family section, lifeguards, and shallow for 50 metres
Holy places in Abu Dhabi
About a tenth of the people living here are Emirati and Muslim; the rest brought their own faiths, and the state licenses places for them on donated land. That is why this list has a Hindu temple of carved stone, forty-odd churches, and a purpose-built synagogue, all within an hour of each other, and all of them on ground given by the ruling family.
- Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque · Free, closed to visitors Friday morning, and shoulders and knees covered
- Abrahamic Family House · Free, booked by slot online, and all three are open to visitors
- BAPS Hindu Mandir · Free, 50 minutes out on the Dubai road, and closed Monday
- Mar Thoma Church · Free, Indian Orthodox, and the Malayalam services fill on Friday
- Wahat Al Karama · Free, open till ten, and the walk between the two takes eight minutes
- Hili Archaeological Park · Free, and the collective tomb in it is about 4,500 years old
Nightlife in Abu Dhabi
Alcohol here is sold only inside licensed hotels and clubs, there is no bar on any street, and nobody drinks in public — that is the law and it is enforced. What the night actually is instead: the heat drops after eight, families come out until midnight, the malls and the Corniche fill, and the island’s best hour is the one after sunset. Friday and Saturday are the weekend, and Friday afternoon is quiet everywhere.
- The Galleria Al Maryah · The licensed restaurants are on the top floor, and they run till one
- Al Maryah promenade · Free, lit till late, and the skyline from it is the one in the photographs
- Yas Marina · Free to walk, and the public cycle nights are on Tuesdays in winter
- Emirates Palace · Walk in after nine for the dome and the coffee, about 70 dirhams
- Observation Deck at 300 · 95 dirhams minimum spend, 300 metres up, and open till midnight
- Corniche · Free, and from nine at night it is the busiest place in the city
- Qasr Al Watan light show · Included in the ticket, at seven-thirty, and it runs fifteen minutes
- Yas Mall · Open till midnight on the weekend, and the food hall is the late one
Frequently asked questions about Abu Dhabi
What is there to see in Abu Dhabi?
The top sights in Abu Dhabi are Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Louvre Abu Dhabi and Qasr Al Watan. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Abu Dhabi?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Abu Dhabi without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Abu Dhabi?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Abu Dhabi, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The island that had one well.
How do you get to Abu Dhabi and get around?
The main ways are Abu Dhabi International Airport, Central Bus Station and Zayed Port cruise terminal. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Abu Dhabi, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Abu Dhabi that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Abu Dhabi for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.