Falcon wings
Five towers, 83 to 123 m tall.
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Zayed National Museum, the UAE's national museum, opened on 3 December 2025 as the centrepiece of Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Cultural District. It traces the land's story from the first evidence of people, some 300,000 years old, to the country's founding, with the life of its founding president, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, as the thread. Foster + Partners designed it in 2007-2010, but the opening, first planned for the early 2010s, slipped for years. Its five wings, 83 to 123 m tall, recall Sheikh Zayed's love of falconry. Shaped as solar thermal towers on the principle of the barjeel, the region's old wind tower, they help cool the galleries, as does air drawn through underground pipes. Visits begin in Al Masar Garden, a 600-metre outdoor gallery that tells Sheikh Zayed's life through desert, oasis and urban landscapes, with native plants and a traditional falaj irrigation channel. Six permanent galleries show more than 1,500 objects, among them a 300,000-year-old stone tool from Jebel Hafeet and the roughly 8,000-year-old Abu Dhabi Pearl from Marawah Island, alongside displays on pearling, inland life and the spread of Islam. The museum also holds an 18-metre reconstruction of a Bronze Age Magan boat. The museum stands about 860 m east of Louvre Abu Dhabi in a straight line, so the two fit easily into one day. Come by car or taxi (parking is free) and allow two to three hours. In straight lines, Qasr Al Hosn lies 7.7 km south-west, and the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and Wahat Al Karama about 15 km south-south-east.
Five towers, 83 to 123 m tall.
About 8,000 years old, from Marawah Island.
A 600 m outdoor gallery.
Saadiyat Cultural District, near Louvre Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island
Yes. The museum's ticket shop sells adult passes for two museums, with Louvre Abu Dhabi or with the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, at 120 AED, and for all three at 170 AED; each is valid for 30 days from the visit date, and Louvre Abu Dhabi is closed on Mondays.
Shipwrights used materials named on an ancient clay tablet and techniques dating to about 2100 BCE: 15 tonnes of local reeds tied into bundles with date-palm rope, lashed to a wooden frame and coated in bitumen, with no nails or metal. In sea trials off Abu Dhabi, the 18 m boat sailed 50 nautical miles (92.6 km) under a goat-hair sail.
