Jeddah was the port of Mecca for fourteen centuries, and pilgrims arriving by sea passed through its coral-stone gates. Al-Balad's tower houses, Ottoman mosques and demolished walls survive as the only intact Red Sea merchant town in the Kingdom.
Built in 1872 for the Naseef merchant family, this four-storey coral-limestone house sheltered King Abdulaziz in 1925 after he took Jeddah. Its ramp staircase was wide enough for camels carrying water to the top floor.
The oldest mosque in Jeddah, its square stone minaret dated to the 7th century Hijri and its ablution well still in the courtyard. The teak-columned prayer hall was rebuilt around a 13th-century core after centuries of additions.
The eastern gate of the walled town, facing the caravan road to Mecca. The 1,500m wall and its seven gates were pulled down in 1947; Bab Makkah was rebuilt as a monument and still marks where pilgrim caravans entered.
A 400-year-old Hejazi merchant house restored by Mohammed Matbouli, with rawasheen bay windows, Ottoman-era chests and a coffee majlis on the ground floor. Around 20 SAR, collected by the owner at the door.
King Abdulaziz's Jeddah residence, built 1928-32 and the first reinforced-concrete building in the Hejaz. He received foreign delegations in its majlis; it now holds the regional archaeology and ethnography collection.
The 1930s customs hall at the old port gate, where Hajj pilgrims arriving by ship were registered before the airport era ended sea pilgrimage. Restored as an exhibition space for the Historic Jeddah programme.
Sheikh Abdul Raouf Khalil's 300-room complex of twelve Hejazi-style buildings, opened in 1987, holding Islamic manuscripts, Nabataean stonework and reconstructed rooms of pre-oil Arabian household life.
An open-air park holding restored monumental works commissioned by mayor Mohammed Said Farsi in the 1970s and 80s — Henry Moore, Jean Arp, Victor Vasarely — gathered in from the roundabouts where they had corroded.
The Sharbatly family's late-19th-century coral house, five storeys of teak-framed rawasheen painted the green-blue of the Hejaz. Restored under the Historic Jeddah programme and opened for exhibitions in the Balad Al-Fann season.
Two Ottoman-era mosques minutes apart in the old quarter: Al-Basha, endowed by Bakr Pasha around 1735, and Al-Mi'mar, founded by Mustafa Agha. Both keep whitewashed courtyards and the short stone minarets of the Hejaz.
A walled cemetery holding the grave long held to be Eve's, described by Ibn Jubayr and Ibn Battuta as a 120-metre mound. The domed shrine over it was levelled in 1928; the enclosure wall and gate are all that remain.
The southern gate of the walled town, where the rampart stood until 1947. Souq Qabel Street traces its line, and the evening crowd of Yemeni and Hadrami traders keeps the quarter working much as it did under Ottoman rule.