ATLAS · WORLD HERITAGE · SAUDI ARABIA
World Heritage Sites in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia has 8 sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List — 7 cultural, 1 natural. Below: how they split by type, and the headline sites. From UNESCO’s official list, snapshot 2026-06-22.
By heritage type
Notable sites in Saudi Arabia
A spread of the country’s heritage — the rarer mixed and natural sites first, then its earliest inscriptions.
The property encompasses the western part of the greatest expanse of windblown sand on Earth, known as Ar Rub' al-KhaIi, and conserves a portion of one of the Earth’s most spectacular desert landscapes. The varied topography of the property creates a wide range of ecosystems. The site is globally…
The Hegra Archaeological Site (al-Hijr / Madā ͐ in Ṣāliḥ) is the first World Heritage property to be inscribed in Saudi Arabia. Formerly known as Hegra it is the largest conserved site of the civilization of the Nabataeans south of Petra in Jordan. It features well-preserved monumental tombs…
This property was the first capital of the Saudi Dynasty, in the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, north-west of Riyadh. Founded in the 15th century, it bears witness to the Najdi architectural style, which is specific to the centre of the Arabian peninsula. In the 18th and early 19th century, its…
Historic Jeddah is situated on the eastern shore of the Red Sea. From the 7th century AD it was established as a major port for Indian Ocean trade routes, channelling goods to Mecca. It was also the gateway for Muslim pilgrims to Mecca who arrived by sea. These twin roles saw the city develop int…
This property includes two components situated in a desert landscape: Jabel Umm Sinman at Jubbah and the Jabal al-Manjor and Raat at Shuwaymis. A lake once situated at the foot of the Umm Sinman hill range that has now disappeared used to be a source of fresh water for people and animals in…
In the eastern Arabian Peninsula, the Al-Ahsa Oasis is a serial property comprising gardens, canals, springs, wells and a drainage lake, as well as historical buildings, urban fabric and archaeological sites. They represent traces of continued human settlement in the Gulf region from the Neolithi…
Located in an arid, mountainous area of southwest Saudi Arabia, on one of the Arabian Peninsula’s ancient caravan routes, Ḥimā Cultural Area contains a substantial collection of rock art images depicting hunting, fauna, flora and lifestyles in a cultural continuity of 7,000 years. Travellers an…
Lying at a strategic point of the ancient trade routes of the Arabian Peninsula, the property was abruptly abandoned around the 5th century CE. Nearly 12,000 archaeological remains have been found, spanning from prehistoric times to the Late pre-Islamic era, testifying to the successive occupatio…