Riyadh

Riyadh is the capital of Saudi Arabia, on the Najd plateau in the center of the Arabian Peninsula. Its name comes from the Arabic word for gardens, after the date groves and orchards that grew along Wadi Hanifa. The Kingdom Centre tower, with a sky bridge across the opening at its top, became a sign of the modern city in the early 2000s.

Riyadh grew from the oasis town of Hajr, the chief town of the Yamamah region in early Islamic times. Turki bin Abdullah made it the capital of the second Saudi state in 1824. Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud took the town and its Masmak Fort in 1902 and went on to found the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the 1930s. The old mud walls came down in the 1950s, and the city spread across the desert along a grid of wide roads as oil revenue paid for new ministries, housing and universities.

SABIC makes chemicals, plastics and fertilizers and has its headquarters in the city, as does Ma'aden, which mines gold and phosphate in the kingdom. Almarai sells milk, laban and juices across the Gulf states from its base in Riyadh.

The Masmak Fort, a clay and mud-brick citadel with four watchtowers, is now a museum of the founding of the kingdom. The National Museum of Saudi Arabia stands in the King Abdulaziz Historical Center and tells the history of the peninsula from prehistoric times. At-Turaif in Diriyah, the mud-brick seat of the first Saudi state on the northwestern edge of the city, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the 2010s. King Saud University, the first university of the kingdom, opened in Riyadh in the 1950s.