What you need to know about Saudi Arabia's AlUla, which opens on October 31

Al Ula, Saudi Arabia’s ancient open-air museum, will start welcoming tourists from October 31. Here's why you should visit.

The UNESCO World Heritage Site Hegra (pictured), the ancient kingdom of Dadan, and the whispering canyons of Jabal Ikmah will be the first sites to re-open to the public, having been largely closed off to visitors for over two years.

If you like culture, this spot is a must-visit. There are preserved tombs, sandstone outcrops, historic dwellings and monuments, both natural and human-made, that hold 200,000 years of largely unexplored human history. | ABove: The Elephant Rock, one of Al Ula’s most popular attractions.

Discover the breathtaking landscape and history of Hegra, Dadan and Jabal Ikmah. Saudi Arabia's first ever UNESCO UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Present are old stone tools dating back to Paleolithic times and burials and funerary monuments from the Bronze age.

In the ruins of the capital city of Dadan and Lihyan, you can see the progressive water management system and development of agriculture in the AlUla Valley. You can also witness the ancient North Arabian scripts and languages (best seen at nearby Jabal ‘Ikmah) dotting the sites.

It feels like another planet. There’s no light pollution, so you can see pretty much every single star in the sky. There is no traffic, so the air is fresh, there are no skyscrapers, so your views are totally unobstructed. The mushroom and elephant shaped rock formations also add to that out worldly notion.

This is the Maraya Theatre. It is a concert hall in Al Ula and is used as part of the Winter at Tantora festival. ‘Maraya’, which in Arabic means reflection or mirror, is built close to Hegra Saudi Arabia’s first UNESCO world heritage site.

Al Ula is full of interesting things to do. Whether it’s going on an adventure, fine dining or even a trip to Saudi Arabia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site with millennia of archaeological treasures and records of timeless traditions that continue to this day.