Dubai and Abu Dhabi, compared: which luxurious city in the UAE should you visit?

Home to more than their fair share of the world’s biggest, fastest and tallest wonders, Abu Dhabi and Dubai offer features of ultra-modern architecture and an oil-wealth of sights to marvel at

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Burj Khalifa rises into the clouds. It’s the tallest man-made structure in the World at 828 metres, in downtown Dubai. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 6:15am, 6 Oct 2024

Looking down from atop Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, it is difficult to believe that the tiny territory’s first paved road was completed only in the early 1960s.

Now this great spire of a tower acts like the gnomon of a sundial, throwing a long shadow far below that slowly swings across a cityscape of multi-lane highways and a forest of eye-catching constructions by every fashionable foreign architect from Tadao Ando to the late Zaha Hadid.

Some roads lead southwest along the coast of the Persian Gulf to the equally youthful Abu Dhabi, Dubai’s rival and capital of the United Arab Emirates. A little more sober, as befits the home of ministers and diplomats, the city nevertheless boasts its own display of architectural fireworks and other sparkly entertainments.

The view of the Dubai city skyline at dusk from Dubai Creek Harbour. Photo: Getty Images

Local airlines Etihad and Emirates now use Abu Dhabi and Dubai, respectively, as hubs to connect far-flung destinations, in a reinvention of maritime trade routes along which goods from the Far East crossed by land between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. Both carriers offer excursions to key sights for passengers with a few hours to spare between connecting flights.

But these cities deserve longer stopovers, and are perfect family destinations – vast playgrounds created from scratch using almost unlimited oil wealth: theme parks, museums of fine art, extravagant afternoon teas and long beaches of fine white sand by warm turquoise waters.

The desert has not been altogether banished, and can still be seen stretching away into a hazy distance, but any sign of the nomadic life it once supported, or the trade caravans and pearl fisheries that brought modest prosperity in times past, needs seeking out.

Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi is all about palaces, and many visitors arriving at its knot of bridge-linked islands begin by checking into one – most likely of the five-star, all-inclusive variety on Saadiyat Island, where a single beachside stretch sees a Turkish-branded Rixos Premium property sandwiched between a Park Hyatt and a St Regis – and then leave only when it is time to return to the airport.