Qatar

A historic military fortress built in 1938 under Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani on the site of the ancient trading town of Zubarah, now part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that preserves the most extensive eighteenth-to-nineteenth-century settlement in the Gulf.

A purpose-built cultural and commercial complex on reclaimed coastal land between West Bay and The Pearl, designed to resemble a traditional Qatari village with low sand-coloured buildings, an amphitheatre seating 5,000, and venues for art, opera and cinema.

A unique inland sea where the Persian Gulf pushes deep into the Qatari desert, creating a landscape of high dunes, sabkha flats and open water that is one of the few places in the world where you can swim in the sea surrounded by desert on three sides.

A world-renowned art museum on a purpose-built island at the Doha Corniche, designed by I.M. Pei at age 91, housing 1,400 years of Islamic art from three continents.

An artificial island of nearly four square kilometres off the West Bay coast, The Pearl-Qatar was the first land in Qatar available for freehold foreign ownership and is now a densely developed residential, leisure and hospitality district with a distinctive Venetian-style canal district.

A restored nineteenth-century market in central Doha where narrow alleys, shuttered doorways and timber-framed balconies recapture the feel of old Qatar, now filled with shops, restaurants and shisha lounges.