The Financial District of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia

 

When I first decided to write about Riyadh's financial district and researched what information I could find online, everything felt fine. But now that I'm actually writing about it, I feel a bit like a fraud. Why? There are, of course, much better pictures online, and I only took the bus twice around the district and then we moved on. We didn't get off at the district itself, which would have been lovely, but also very time-consuming, since there are about 50 large, architecturally interesting buildings to see. A total of 95 skyscrapers are planned there.

But let's get into details. For an overview, I first looked at the Wikipedia article in English and only read the introduction [1]. It tells us that the correct name is King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD; Arabic: مركز الملك عبدالله المالي). But I got sidetracked again and first looked up what other articles were available. There was the Dutch Wikipedia article [2], which mentioned the Canadian company Bombardier, which had been awarded a contract worth US$241 million to build a monorail. And then I read the Italian article [3]. That's where I became aware of the Danish architect Henning Larsen, who created the master plan for the huge project. I had the Arabic text [4] translated, but none of these articles provides more information than the English article.

There are some interesting buildings to see, and the metro station is futuristic, like something out of a science fiction film. It really fascinated me. I was disappointed that we didn't have time to visit it, as three lines (Blue, Yellow, and Purple) converge there [5]. We were much too close from the street to get a good angle for a photo from the bus. We could see some of the skyscrapers, and there's still a lot of construction going on. The overall project is just over half complete, and more buildings are planned. The best place to get all the details is the English Wikipedia article, which provides a wealth of information. Currently, the project is estimated to cost US$7.8 billion, but comparing it to similar projects, I think that figure will increase.

Since I was very interested in the metro, I looked for better pictures, which can be found, for example, at [5]. Besides the English Wikipedia article, I would also highly recommend VisitSaudi. If I ever come back to Riyadh, which I certainly hope I will, I'll take the metro there to visit the metro station and then wander around the financial district.

 

Links and Annotations:
[1] King Abdullah Financial District
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_Financial_District
[2] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_Financial_District
[3] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distretto_finanziario_King_Abdullah
[4] https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%B1%D9%83%D8%B2_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%84%D9% 83_%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%AF_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%D9%87_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A
[5] Metro station
https://www.visitsaudi.com/en/riyadh/attractions/visit-kafd

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