Jeddah collects what the rest of the Kingdom exports: Henry Moore bronzes parked on the Corniche, teak-balconied merchant houses turned galleries, and Hayy Jameel's cinema and studios. Three days across 1,400 years of Hejazi taste.
Twenty modernist works by Henry Moore, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Victor Vasarely and Jean Arp, rescued from roundabouts across the city and rehung in a landscaped seafront park. Open 24 hours, unfenced, no ticket desk.
Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil's 1987 masterpiece and winner of the Aga Khan Award: load-bearing brick domes, no steel frame, courtyards cooled by cross-draughts alone. The largest of the 15 mosques he built in Jeddah.
The gallery that put Saudi contemporary art on the Venice Biennale map, representing Ahmed Mater, Manal AlDowayan and Ayman Zedani. Museum-scale white-cube rooms on the fifth floor of Serafi Mega Mall, Tahlia Street.
Qaswra Hafez's gallery specialises in Saudi modernists — Abdulhalim Radwi, Safeya Binzagr, Mohammed Al-Saleem — alongside younger Hejazi painters, with a research library of exhibition catalogues rarely found outside Riyadh.
Abdul Raouf Khalil's private obsession: 300 rooms over four coral-and-teak buildings in Al-Faisaliyah, covering Islamic manuscripts, Nabatean stonework, Hejazi costume and a hall of European furniture. Sunday–Thursday, 09:00–20:00.
The restored home of the composer who wrote the Saudi national anthem, now the Kingdom's music museum: his oud collection, handwritten scores, 1950s Egyptian recording equipment and listening booths of early Hejazi radio broadcasts.
The 1930s customs house on the old harbour edge, gutted and rebuilt as Al-Balad's largest exhibition hall. It anchors the Red Sea International Film Festival each December and hosts Islamic Arts Biennale overflow shows between seasons.
Art Jameel's 17,000 sqm arts complex on Prince Saud Al-Faisal Road: an independent cinema screening Arab and world repertory, artist studios, a black-box performance space and Fenaa's design shop. Screenings most evenings.
Seven storeys of coral limestone and Javanese teak built in 1881, with a ramp wide enough for camels to climb to the fourth floor. King Abdulaziz stayed here in 1925; the neem tree outside was once Jeddah's only tree.
Jeddah's oldest surviving building, founded in the 7th century with a square teak-topped minaret added in the 13th. Its open courtyard and rawshan-screened prayer hall show Hejazi construction three centuries before the merchant houses.
The working auction hall north of the old port where Red Sea hammour, kingfish and parrotfish come ashore. Buyers bid from 04:00, but the afternoon retail floor and the grill stalls out back run until evening.
The specialty coffee house inside a restored Al-Balad courtyard that became the district's informal arts salon — poetry nights, zine launches and the crowd of young Jeddawi curators who staff the biennale.