"Before visiting Saudi Arabia, I had not really understood that the area of AlUla is made up of a number of archaeological sites. It was not until the symposium that I discovered that there are, in fact, 30,000 archaeological sites in this area, although there are only eight that are currently open to visitors, and more than a dozen active archaeological research projects."
"Saudi Arabia, a notoriously closed country to outsiders until now, decided in 2017 that the country would have a major change in policy and actively invite tourists to visit. And one of the things that they can offer is their amazing archaeological sites. And so there is a vision, and to enable the vision, which plans to bring 2 million visitors to AlUla by 2030, the Royal Commission of AlUla (RCU) was set up."
AlUla comprises some 30,000 archaeological sites, though only eight are currently open to visitors and more than a dozen archaeological research projects are active. Visit-ready sites include Jabal Ikmah with hundreds of inscriptions; Hegra with massive Nabatean tombs, a town and a Roman fort; Qurh, an early Islamic city; Dadan dating from the 8th to the 1st century BCE; Tayma, an oasis settlement continuously inhabited since the Bronze Age; Khaybar with continuous occupation from prehistoric periods to today; and the old town of AlUla occupied from the 12th to the 20th century CE. Saudi Arabia enacted a major tourism policy shift in 2017 and established the Royal Commission of AlUla to develop the region and target two million visitors by 2030.
Read at World History Encyclopedia
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