A Gulf state almost nobody visits — three enamelled towers, a two-century-old souk, Alexander's temple on an island, and a national memory of 1990
01 / 10
Kuwait City
shoppingThe city's oldest market, trading for over two centuries — spice and oud alleys, a date souk, gold, and open-air tea houses where old Kuwaitis argue about football under the awnings.
02 / 10
Al-Rai
shoppingOne of the largest malls on earth, built as a series of themed districts — a glass-roofed 'Grand Avenue' street, a mock souk, a Prestige wing — and effectively Kuwait's public square for half the year.
03 / 10
Kuwait City
cultureA museum looted almost to the walls in 1990 and slowly rebuilt, with the Al-Sabah Islamic collection alongside it, and next door a courtyard house preserving Bedouin sadu weaving.
04 / 10
Kuwait City
cultureThree tapered concrete spikes on a headland, two of them studded with blue-green enamel discs — the country's emblem, shelled in the 1990 invasion and rebuilt, with a slowly rotating viewing sphere at the top.
05 / 10
Kuwait City
cultureThe largest mosque in the country — a 26-metre dome over a hall for ten thousand, teak doors, and a guided tour that exists specifically for non-Muslim visitors.
06 / 10
Failaka
cultureAn hour out into the Gulf to a Bronze Age Dilmun settlement and a Greek temple left by Alexander's fleet — and, beside them, a village abandoned in 1990 and left exactly as it was.
07 / 10
Salmiya
leisureThe largest aquarium on the Arabian Peninsula, following the water from desert wadi to Gulf reef, with a dhow harbour outside and an IMAX screen attached.
08 / 10
Kuwait City
leisureTwo hundred thousand square metres of park built over the old city wall line, with a habitat garden, a lake and two underground museums about Kuwait's memory of the occupation.
09 / 10
Salmiya
leisureA crescent of waterfront restaurants around a small-boat marina, at the end of a corniche that runs the whole length of Kuwait Bay and fills every evening with walkers and shisha smoke.
10 / 10
Jabriya
cultureA private collection of Islamic jewellery, calligraphy, ceramics and costume, hidden in the basement of a suburban house — and the reason much of it survived 1990 at all, bricked up behind a false wall.