Saudi Arabia's AlUla Old Town has been selected as a global destination in the UN World Tourism Organization's (UNWTO) list of the 32 best tourism villages in 2022, the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) has announced in its Twitter account.
The listing follows comprehensive conservation and restoration, promoting agriculture, developing services and visitor experience at the village, RCU said.
AlUla is a place of extraordinary human and natural heritage with a living museum of preserved tombs, sandstone outcrops, historic dwellings and monuments, both natural and human-made, that hold 200,000 years of largely unexplored human history.
Saudi Arabia has long been a crossroads of ancient civilisations and AlUla is an extraordinary example of this.
AlUla Old Town is located in the narrowest part of the AlUla Valley. Built on a slight elevation, the town is overlooked by the Musa bin Nusayr Castle, a citadel dating back approximately to the 10th century.
AlUla Old Town has nearly 900 houses, 400 shops and five town squares and still contains remnants of some of the original stone and mudbrick buildings.
