Saudi Arabia’s newest hotel won’t be an urban highrise like you might expect but a subterranean hotel carved into a sandstone hill in the AlUla desert, which is located about 220 miles north of the city of Medina.
Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the hotel will be built into the sandstone and was inspired by the nearby Madâin Sâlih UNESCO World Heritage site, where the remains of a Nabatean city can be found. The Nabatean people lived in the desert between the second and fourth century BC and carved cities into the area’s sandstone rock — Petra being the most famous example.
