Gigantomania in Saudi style: shrines are being destroyed in Mecca to build monster hotels

In the holy city of Mecca for all Muslims in Saudi Arabia, the largest hotel in the world is being built: a giant building will house 10 thousand rooms, the total area of the functional areas of the hotel will exceed 1.4 million square meters. In fact, the hotel complex will be a mini-city with 70 restaurants and food courts, 45 shops, 4 playgrounds for helicopters, a conference center, gyms, parking lots and prayer rooms.

But this is not the only giant hotel in Mecca…

The Abraj-Kudai Hotel resembles a traditional fortress with its outlines. The giant building consists of ten towers-buildings assembled in a ring.

One of the largest domes in the world, designed in the Moroccan style, will be installed on the central tower of the hotel with a height of 45 floors. Around it, on the roof of the towers, there will be four helipads. There are also plans to open an extensive meeting room inside the dome. The number of rooms in ten towers of the hotel will correspond to the 4* level, two more towers will house five-star rooms and royal apartments.

3D computer model of the world's largest hotel "Abraj-Kudai"

The opening was planned for 2017, but due to the fall in oil prices, construction was delayed. The hotel will receive its first guests no earlier than 2019.

Investors are confident that the hotel will be in high demand, as millions of Muslim pilgrims from all over the world visit Mecca every year, who perform the Hajj rite - a pilgrimage to the holy places of Islam. One of these Muslim shrines is the Kaaba, a black cube located in the center of the world's largest Al—Haram Mosque, which, after modernization, can accommodate up to 7 million pilgrims at a time.

The sky behind the Great Mosque bristled with construction cranes lifting one tower of a giant hotel after another

"Abraj-Kudai", located just two kilometers from the holy Al-Haram Mosque, is the latest attempt by the Saudis to turn Mecca into a Middle Eastern Manhattan. Over the past few years, the infrastructure and size of the holy city for all Muslims have changed a lot. Many new architectural objects have appeared here, among them "Abraj Al-Bayt" - a huge complex consisting of seven skyscraper hotels overlooking the Kaaba. It is the largest structure in the world by mass, the tallest structure in Saudi Arabia and the third in the world after the Burj Khalifa and the Shanghai Tower, as well as the tallest hotel in the world.

The hotel "Abraj Al-Bayt" with its giant clock is much larger than the Great Mosque and the black cube of Kabbah, which are quite large in themselves.

At the top of the highest Royal Tower there is a huge clock with a diameter of 43 meters (the length of the hour hand is 17 meters, the minute hand is 22), located at an altitude of more than 400 meters above the ground. Their four dials are installed on the four cardinal directions. The giant clock is visible from anywhere in the city and is the largest and highest clock in the world, and at night, thanks to the illumination, it can be seen from a distance of 30 km.

View of the towers of the hotel "Abraj Al-Bayt" from the Great Mosque

The construction of "Abraj Al-Bayt" caused a lot of controversy. To make room for this structure, developers destroyed an ancient Ottoman fortress of the XVIII century and leveled the hill on which it stood. The now demolished Aijad Fortress was built in 1781 during the reign of the Ottoman Empire in order to protect the Kaaba from attack.

This is how the northern part of the Great Mosque will look in the future. Kabbah is a tiny speck in the lower right corner

The destruction of heritage sites associated with the period of early Islam has been going on for centuries since the Wahhabis declared that idolatry is sinful. In Mecca and Medina, the most important objects associated with the Prophet Muhammad and his family, including tombs, mausoleums, mosques and houses, were destroyed. The house of Khadija, Muhammad's first wife, was destroyed in order, according to Wikipedia, to make a passage to the library, and according to The Guardian, to make room for public toilets. Where the house of the first Islamic Caliph Abu Bakr used to stand, the Hilton Hotel now stands. The house where the Prophet Muhammad was born now lies in ruins. The house in which he lived in Medina and the first Islamic school where the Prophet studied were also razed to the ground. At the same time, the list of crimes against heritage can go on and on.

Thousands of tents for pilgrims in Mina, near Mecca

The bulk of tourists in Saudi Arabia are pilgrims, especially in Mecca, entry to which is prohibited for infidels. During the annual Hajj, more than three million pilgrims come to Mecca, and in the remaining months more than 20 million people visit the holy city, because it has become a popular place for weddings and conferences. To cope with the ever-increasing influx of tourists, the Saudis decided to demolish most of the old residential quarters, including heritage sites, to make way for the infrastructure needed for so many pilgrims.

In the city of Mina, located 8 kilometers from Mecca, the government of Saudi Arabia has installed more than 100 thousand tents with air conditioning to accommodate pilgrims. And although every year the Hajj is held only for five days, tents are installed here all the time.

Another major construction project in Mecca is Jebal Omar, a hotel consisting of 40 residential towers that will accommodate 160,000 Islamic pilgrims, as well as a prayer area for 200,000 believers. The Great Mosque itself is undergoing a $50 billion upgrade to double the capacity of prayer halls — from 3 million to almost 7 million people. To make room for a giant project, a huge part of the old city was simply razed to the ground. Local residents were confronted with the fact of eviction in just a week, and many of them still have not received compensation.

Jebal-Omar under construction

But the most long-awaited project of Saudi Arabia is considered to be the Jeddah Tower, which is also called the "Royal Tower", in the port city of Jeddah. The height of the skyscraper is expected to be one kilometer, and it will have more than 250 floors. It will be the tallest building in the world, surpassing the Burj Khalifa in Dubai with a height of 828 meters.