Tower sights in Middle East
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Al-Faisaliah Tower Viewing Platform
On the 34th floor of Al-Faisaliah Tower can be found a fabulous viewing platform. The tower's needlepoint pinnacle sits 267m above the ground.
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Kingdom Tower Sky Bridge
High-speed elevators fly you (at 180km/h) to the 99th floor Kingdom Tower Sky Bridge, from where the views are breathtaking (photos are allowed). Avoid weekends and evenings after 18:00 when it can get very crowded.
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Israelite Tower
Buried beneath a modern apartment block on Shone HaLakhot St and reached by a short flight of steps, the Israelite Tower is a gate tower from the time of the Babylonian siege and destruction of the First Temple (roughly 580 BC).
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Azadi Tower (Borj-e Azadi)
Way out west at the end of Azadi Ave is the inverted Y-shaped Azadi Tower, built to commemorate the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire in 1971. There's an underground gallery, Quran museum, cinema and, best of all, viewing platform.
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Al-Gharbiyya Minaret
There are three minarets in the Umayyad Mosque dating from the original construction, each of which was renovated and restored by the Ayyubids, Mamluks and Ottomans. The one in the southwestern corner, the Mamluk-styled Al-Gharbiyya Minaret, is the most beautiful;
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Watchtower
The restored Portuguese Watchtower on a promontory out to sea, half way along the corniche, affords a lovely view out to sea. Access to the staircase is from behind the Al-Inshirah Restaurant. The area is a popular place to catch the evening breeze and is decorated with colourful fountains at night.
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Liberation Tower
Not to be confused with the distinctive Kuwait Towers, Liberation Tower in the city centre is the tallest building in the city, and at a height of 372m claims to be the fifth-tallest communications tower in the world. Started before the invasion, the tower took its new name when it was completed in 1993.
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Shalom Tower
Near the bottom of Rothschild Blvd sits the imposing bulk of the Shalom Tower, the city's first skyscraper. It was built on the site of the city's first building, Gymnasia Herzlia (1909). Today there is a shopping arcade inside, plus an observation deck (x517 7304) with great views of the city and beyond.
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Milad Tower (Borj-e Milad)
Standing 435m high, including 120m of antenna, Milad Tower bears a striking resemblance to Toronto’s CN Tower, with the octagonal concrete shaft tapering from the base to a pod with 12 floors. The pod is home to an observation deck, a revolving restaurant, a ‘sky dome’ and various TV, radio and traffic control functions.
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Lutheran Church of the Redeemer
Dominating the Old City skyline with its tall white tower, the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer was built in 1898 on the site of the 11th-century church of St Mary la Latine. The closed northern entrance porch is medieval, decorated with the signs of the zodiac and the symbols of the months. The tower is popular for its excellent views over the Old City.
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Mil-e Gonbad
Mil-e Gonbad is utterly magnificent. Soaring, 55m tall on 12m-deep foundations, this astonishing tower has the cross-section of a 10-pointed star, and looks like a buttressed brick spaceship. It was built in 1006 for poet-artist-prince Qabus ibn Vashmgir but is so remarkably well preserved that one can scarcely believe it’s 100, let alone 1000 years old.
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Church of the Ascension
Sanctity aside, perhaps the best reason to visit the Church of the Ascension is to walk the flight of steps to the top of the 45m-high tower for some spectacular views across the Judean Desert. The church itself, free to visit, features some notable mosaics, paintings and masonry work. Don’t confuse it with the nearby Mosque of the Ascension. The church is next to Augusta Victoria Hospital, and Arab bus 75 stops outside.
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Alaviyan Dome
The Alaviyan Dome is now a misnomer, as the 12th-century green dome, immortalised in a Khaqani reference, has long since been removed. The dome-less brick tower remains famous for the whirling floral stucco added in the Ilkhanid era. This ornamentation enraptured Robert Byron in Road to Oxiana, but frankly it’s ugly. In the crypt (narrow steps down from the interior at the back) is the plain-blue tiled Alaviyan family tomb covered with votive Islamic embroidery.
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Kingdom Tower
Riyadh's newest landmark, the Kingdom Tower is another stunning piece of modern architecture. Known as the 'necklace' for its unusual apex, it's particularly conspicuous at night when the upper sweep is lit with constantly-changing coloured lights.
Rising 302m above the ground, its most distinctive feature is the steel-and-glass, 300-tonne bridge connecting the two towers. High-speed elevators fly you (at 180km/h) to the 99th floor Sky Bridge. If you're feeling peckish, the tower is also home to some reputable restaurants, including Spazio 77.
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Al-Faisaliah Tower
Designed by British architect Norman Foster and built in 2000 by the Bin Laden construction company, Al-Faisaliah Tower was the first of the startling new structures to rise above Riyadh's skyline. It's most famous for its enormous glass globe (24m in diameter and made of 655 glass panels) near the summit.
On its 34 floors can be found a five-star deluxe hotel and four exclusive restaurants, offices, apartments, the Sky shopping malland a fabulous viewing platform. The tower's needlepoint pinnacle (with a crescent on the tip) sits 267m above the ground.
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Pigeon Towers
For centuries Esfahan relied on pigeons to supply guano as fertiliser for the city's famous fields of watermelons. The guano was collected in almost 3000 squat, circular pigeon towers, each able to house about 14,000 birds. Today they are unused, made redundant by chemical fertiliser, but more than 700 of the mud-brick towers remain in the city's environs.
The best place to see them is dotted along the Zayandeh River south of the Ateshkadeh. The 10km walk back into Esfahan makes a great afternoon, and you're also likely to see locally made cloth being laid out to dry.
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Kuwait Towers
Kuwait's most famous landmark, the Kuwait Towers, with their distinctive green 'sequins', are worth a visit for the prospect of sea and city that they afford. Designed by a Swedish architectural firm and opened in 1979, the largest of the three towers rises to a height of 187m, and house a two-level revolving observation deck, gift shop and café. The lower globe on the largest tower stores around one million gallons of water.
The middle tower is also used for water storage, while the smallest tower is used to light up the other two. A collection of photographs show how the so-called 'barbarian invaders' tried to destroy the symbol of Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion.
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Towers of Silence
Set on two lonely, barren hilltops on the southern outskirts of Yazd are the evocative Zoroastrian Towers of Silence. In accordance with Zoroastrian beliefs about the purity of the earth, dead bodies were not buried but left in these uncovered stone towers so that vultures could pick the bones clean. Such towers have not been used since the '60s.
At the foot of the hills on the southern outskirts of Yazd are several disused Zoroastrian buildings, including a defunct well, a water cistern and two small badgirs (windtowers or wind catchers), a kitchen and a lavatory. The modern Zoroastrian cemetery is nearby.
The easiest way to get here is by chartering a private taxi for…
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Towers of Yemliko
To the south of the city wall at the foot of low hills is a series of variously sized, freestanding, square-based towers. Known as the Towers of Yemliko, they were constructed as multistorey burial chambers, stacked high with coffins posted in pigeonhole-like niches. The niches, or loculi, were then sealed with a stone panel carved with a head and shoulders portrait of the deceased; you can see dozens of these stone portraits in the Palmyra Museum, and in the National Museum at Damascus.
The tallest of the towers - at four storeys high - is the most interesting. It dates from AD 83 and although it is kept locked you can peer in through the barred entrance. There is also…
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Tower of Elahbel
Further west of the Towers of Yemliko (a group of towers constructed as multistorey burial chambers), deeper into the hills, are plenty more funerary towers, some totally dilapidated, others relatively complete. By far the best preserved is the Tower of Elahbel, which is situated about 500m west of the Yemliko group. Built in AD 103, it has four storeys and could purportedly accommodate up to 300 sarcophagi. It's possible to ascend an internal staircase to visit the upper storey tomb chambers and to get out onto the roof.
Also here is the chamber that formerly housed the Hypogeum of Yarhai, dismantled and reconstructed in the National Museum.To visit Elahbel it's…
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Old San'a
All these galleries are very nice, but let's be honest, on their own they're not worth traipsing halfway around the world for. However, the Unesco-protected old city of San'a is a different matter altogether. It would be fair to say that old San'a is one of the most beautiful cities anywhere on Earth and nothing is likely to prepare you for the moment you first pass through the gates of the Bab al-Yaman.
Most people spend days wandering without aim through this enormous work of art and that's certainly the best way to absorb this city. A compulsory activity for tourist and local alike is to climb to the top of one of the tower houses and relish the ravishing views over…
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