Kingdom Centre

Stand at the base and tilt your head back. The glass climbs in a smooth, pale wall, and then, high above you, the building simply opens. There is a hole in the sky up there, a great curved gap where the two halves of the tower lean apart. In the heat of the afternoon, the glass throws back a hard silver light. After dark, the same shape glows with colour above the traffic of Riyadh.

This is Kingdom Centre, one of the most recognisable shapes on the Saudi skyline. It rises from King Fahd Road, the long commercial spine of the city, in the Olaya district. Around you, the roar of cars on the wide boulevard mixes with the hum of air conditioning from the mall entrances. The air smells of dust, hot pavement, and, near the doors, the sweet smoke of oud perfume drifting out from the shops inside.

The tower was completed in 2002. It was built for Kingdom Holding Company, the investment group led by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a member of the Saudi royal family and one of the region's best-known businessmen. The design came from the American firm Ellerbe Becket, working with the Saudi practice Omrania. At about three hundred metres tall, it was for a time the tallest building in the country. That title has since passed to newer towers, but the silhouette has kept its place in the city's imagination.

Look again at that opening near the top. The building's upper section is shaped like a parabola, a smooth curve similar to the path of a thrown ball. The two sides narrow as they rise, and the inner edge forms the arch you see from below. Across the very top of the arch runs a bridge. It joins the two halves together, and it is the highest point most visitors can reach.

Here is a detail many people miss. When the tower was planned, a commonly repeated explanation says that local rules limited how many floors a building could fill with offices or homes. The designers kept the occupied floors in the lower part of the tower. Much of the upper section, the part that makes the shape so famous, is essentially a frame of steel and glass around open air. The most striking part of the building is also, in a sense, the emptiest.

That bridge at the top is called the Sky Bridge. To reach it, visitors take a fast lift and then a second lift higher still. Step out, and you are walking along an enclosed glass walkway with the city spread out on both sides. On a clear day, Riyadh appears as a wide, flat grid of low beige buildings. It runs toward the desert in every direction, with long straight highways cutting through it like ruled lines.

From up there, look for another tower close by. It has a gold-tinted glass sphere set high in its pointed top. That is Al Faisaliah Tower, designed by the British architect Norman Foster and completed around the same time. For years, these two buildings stood almost alone above the low city. Locals often treated them as a pair of landmarks. One had a ball in its tip, the other had a hole in its top.

Back on the ground, the lower floors hold the Kingdom Centre mall. It is a polished, multi-level space of marble floors, glass railings, and high atriums. International fashion brands sit beside perfume houses and stores selling abayas, the long flowing robes many Saudi women wear. In the evening, families come here to walk, shop, and escape the heat. The sound shifts from traffic to soft music, echoing footsteps, and the chatter of children.

Here is a second surprise. For many years, one floor of the mall was reserved for women only. The idea was to give women a place to shop freely in a society with strict rules on mixing men and women in public. Saudi Arabia has changed a great deal in recent years. Many of those rules have relaxed. That floor carries a small piece of the social history of the country inside a modern shopping centre.

The tower also contains a luxury hotel, offices, and apartments. Above the shop windows, thousands of people work each day in banking, investment, and business services. In this way the building is not a monument you only look at. It is a working part of the city. Office workers in crisp white thobes, the traditional long shirts worn by Saudi men, hurry across the lobbies with coffee in hand.

Now think about the setting. When the tower went up, Riyadh was a much quieter skyline than it is today. Since then, the city has grown fast, with new business districts, metro lines, and ambitious towers further north. Kingdom Centre now stands among younger neighbours. Yet its shape still works as a reference point. Many residents give directions by it, and taxi drivers know it without a second word.

At night, the tower changes character. Lights run along the edges of the arch, and the colours shift over time. During national celebrations, the glow often turns green, the colour of the Saudi flag. From a few streets away, the illuminated arch seems to float above the dark buildings around it. If you have time, walk a short distance along King Fahd Road after sunset and turn back to watch the outline glow.

So before you leave, take one more slow look upward. Notice how the glass softens from silver to blue as the light changes. Notice the thin line of the bridge, so small from here, holding the two curved halves together. Then listen to the city around you, the traffic, the doors sighing open, the voices in the evening air. The tower stays here, keeping its open arch to the sky, as Riyadh keeps growing around it.