Boek tickets voor Doha — closing soon

Few cities have remade themselves as deliberately as Doha. Within living memory it was a modest pearl-diving settlement on a shallow inlet of the Arabian Gulf; today its skyline along the Corniche reads like a catalogue of contemporary architecture, with towers designed by some of the most recognisable names in the field rising from land that was, in many places, reclaimed from the sea. That transformation is not incidental to visiting Doha. It is the subject.

The waterfront Corniche remains the clearest place to take the city's measure. The crescent-shaped promenade stretches for several kilometres, with the West Bay district's glass towers on one side and the Gulf on the other, and it is where residents and visitors alike tend to gravitate at dusk when the heat softens. Across the water, the Museum of Islamic Art occupies its own small peninsula, a building designed by I. M. Pei that draws on centuries of Islamic architecture without copying any single tradition. The collection inside spans fourteen centuries and three continents, and an audio guide helps place individual objects, many of them extraordinary, within that broader sweep. It is one of the more serious museum experiences available in the Gulf region, and the building alone rewards the visit.