Bahrain Island

The Bahrain National Museum is the largest and one of the oldest public museums in the country. It was built near the King Faisal Highway in the city of Manama and was opened in December 1988. The museum complex, spread over 27,800 square meters and consists of two buildings, houses a rich collection of ancient Bahraini archaeological artifacts acquired since 1988, and covers 6,000 years of Bahraini history.

The Bahrain National Theatre, also known as the Bahrain National Amphitheatre, is a waterfront building complex located in Manama adjacent to the Bahrain National Museum, and consists of a 1,001-seat main auditorium and a smaller 150-seat flexible rehearsal theatre. Opened on 12 November 2012, the theatre covers an area of 11,869 square metres making it the third largest theatre in the Middle East.

Known as Al-Fateh Islamic Center and Al Fateh Grand Mosque, it is one of the largest mosques in the world, spanning 6,500 square meters and with a capacity of over 7,000 worshippers. It was built by Sheikh Isa ibn Salman Al Khalifa in 1987 and named after Ahmed Al Fateh, the conqueror of Bahrain.This mosque is the largest place of worship in Bahrain. It is located near the King Faisal Highway in Juffair, a neighborhood in the capital, Manama. The large dome atop the mosque is made entirely of fiberglass. It weighs over 60 tons and is the largest fiberglass dome in the world. The marble used on the floors is Italian and the chandelier is from Austria. The doors are made of teak wood from India. Throughout the mosque there is calligraphy writing in a very ancient style called Kufic. It also houses the National Library of Bahrain, which contains nearly 7,000 books, some of which are over a hundred years old, including copies of the books of Muhammad's teachings (the books of Hadith), the Global Arabic Encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia of Islamic Jurisprudence, Al-Azhar magazines printed over a hundred years ago, as well as many newspapers and other magazines. Apart from being a place of worship, the mosque is also one of the most important tourist attractions in Bahrain. It is open for tourist visits from 9:00 to 17:00, except on Fridays and other holidays when it is only open for worship.

Qal`at al-Bahrain is an archaeological site located in the Northern Governorate of Bahrain. This man-made hill was inhabited from 2300 BC to around 1700. Among other things, it was once the capital of the Dilmun civilization and later served as a Portuguese fortress. For these reasons, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.It is a typical “tell”, an artificial mound created by successive accumulations of remains, which are formed by human occupation. The strata demonstrate continuous human presence from around 2300 BC to the 16th century. Approximately 25% of the site has been excavated, revealing structures of various types: residential, public, commercial, religious and military, remains that testify to the importance of the place as a commercial port for centuries. On top of the mound, 12 metres high, is the impressive Qal`at al-Burtughal, the Portuguese fortress, which gave the particle qal`a the meaning of fortress. The site was the capital of Dilmun, one of the most important ancient civilisations in the region. It contains the richest inventoried remains of this civilisation, which until now were only known from references in Sumerian writings.

Bab Al Bahrain, meaning Gate of Bahrain, is a historic building located in Customs Square in Manama's central business district and marks the main entrance to the city's Souq. The square is considered the region's first formal public space.Opened in 1949 and designed by the Emir's British advisor Charles Belgrave, it once stood on the shoreline of Manama, but due to extensive land reclamation in the second half of the 20th century, the structure now stands several kilometres inland on Government Avenue in Manama, adjacent to the King Faisal Highway, which leads to the causeway connecting the country to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.The monument was refurbished in 1986 to incorporate Islamic architectural elements. In 2013, a complete refurbishment of the façade and interiors was undertaken. The ground floor now houses the tourist information office and a craft shop. Today, the monument consists essentially of a large arch, beneath which passes a road often referred to as the entrance to the Manama souk (market) and two side arches are made for pedestrians. The building houses several shops and cafes, including Naseef Café, which was the country's first ice cream parlor.

Among Bahrain's mysterious ancient remains are the thousands of burial mounds that dominate the landscape in the north of the island. The burial mounds were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and comprise areas of several necropolises on the main island of Bahrain, dating back to the Dilmun and Umm al-Nar cultures.Bahrain has been known since ancient times as an island with a large number of burial sites; the mounds (originally several square kilometres in size) were said to be one of the largest cemeteries in the ancient world. The cemeteries are concentrated in the north of the island, on the hard, stony areas slightly above the arable agricultural soils. Recent studies have shown that the estimated 350,000 ancient burial mounds could have been made solely by local people over several thousand years. The tombs are not all from the same period, nor exactly the same style, and can vary considerably in size in different areas of the mound field. Research, under the auspices of the Bahrain National Museum (with the keen interest of the Bahrain Historical and Archaeological Society), is continuing to establish a firm chronology for all these variations and continuations, as well as to consider the implications for the society or societies that produced them.The best-preserved and most impressive of these mounds are the royal burial mounds of the village of A’ali. These burial mounds, spanning from the Dilmun era (3rd to 1st millennium BC) to the Tylos era (200 BC to AD 300), are unique in their number and concentration. Pottery workshops in the vicinity of the burial mounds have developed organically over the years, allowing craftsmen to incorporate their facilities around the tombs and even use burial chambers as kilns. Potters fire their pottery using traditional methods that have been passed down through the generations. The A'ali West cemetery is located in the village of Buri, but the official UNESCO designation “A'ali West” is justified by the fact that this burial mound field and the A'ali East burial mound field formed a single physical entity partially divided by a large wadi and now divided by the Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Road. Together, they total 5,392 burial mounds. The A'ali West cemetery comprises 723 burial mounds. It is one of the last examples featuring the distribution of mounds on the edge of a burial mound cemetery. This makes A'ali West quite exceptional, as most other burial mound fields are confined to their central areas. Compared to other late-type cemeteries, the mounds appear less dense. This stems from the ancient preference of the Dilmunites to build larger mounds at the edges of a cemetery. The sizes of the late-type burials are above average and, relative to their importance, the mounds have been built further apart from each other.The A'ali East burial mound field contains six special-type burial mounds with outer ring walls, considered to be an indication of chieftain burials. Some of them are still visible today. They are therefore the last examples of their type, as most of the mounds with an outer ring wall fell victim to urban development.A larger group of mounds can be found in the south-west corner of the A'ali West burial mound field, and the shape and dimensions differ from the neighbouring Dilmun burial mounds. It can therefore be assumed that it houses Tylos burials. It was common in Tylos times to enlarge already existing Dilmun cemeteries, as well as to reuse larger Dilmun tombs.

The first oil well on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf is located in Bahrain. The field is situated under Jebel Dukhan. It was discovered and operated by the Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO), established in 1929 in Canada by the Standard Oil Company of California. Oil first came out of this well on 16 October 1931 and it finally came on stream on the morning of 2 June 1932. The initial oil flow was 9,600 barrels per day (1,530 m³/d); In the 1970s, the well was producing 70,000 barrels per day (11,000 m³/d) and then stabilised at around 35,000 barrels per day (5,600 m³/d). In 1980, BAPCO was taken over by the Bahraini government. Bahrain was the first place on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf where oil was discovered, coinciding with the collapse of the world pearl market.

The Tree of Life in Bahrain is a 400-year-old tree, nearly ten metres tall, of the Prosopis cineraria species and is located about 2 kilometres from the Mountain of Smoke. The tree stands on a hill in the Arabian desert surrounded by kilometres of sand and is the only one within a 2 km radius. The average temperature in the region is 41°C, often reaching 49°C and sandstorms are common. It is not known how the tree survives, scientists have speculated that the nearest possible water source is an underground stream three kilometres away and that it somehow draws water from that stream, others say that it is able to capture moisture from breezes blowing in from the Persian Gulf or extract moisture from grains of sand. According to local legends, the tree stands in what was once the Garden of Eden and thus has a mystical water source, another legend claims that the tree has existed since pre-Islamic times and is protected by the ancient Sumerian god Enki. The tree is a local tourist attraction as it is the only one of any significant size growing in the area and is visited by approximately 50,000 tourists each year, it is popular for growing in the middle of nowhere with no known water source and has never been watered. Bahrain itself is a desert country with little to no rainfall throughout the year, as a result of this, it is also believed that ancient rites were practiced around the tree. In October 2010, archaeologists unearthed 500-year-old pottery and other artifacts in the vicinity of the tree. A soil ring and tree analysis conducted more than 20 years ago concluded that the tree of life was an acacia planted in approximately 1582.

The Bahrain International Circuit, also known as the Sakhir International Circuit, is a racetrack located in the desert area of Sakhir, within the Southern Governorate of the country, approximately 31 km from the capital Manama. Since 2004 it is the current venue for the Bahrain Formula 1 Grand Prix, being at the time the first race held in the Middle East within this category.

Located in the city of Manama, this business centre consists of two twin towers and is one of the tallest buildings in Bahrain (both towers are 240 metres high and have a total of 73 floors). The building is the first to integrate wind turbines into its design and for that reason, the project has received several awards for sustainability, including the 2006 LEAF Awards for “Best Use of Technology in Large-Scale Planning” and the “Arab World Sustainable Building Design” award. Three bridges in the lower half and between the two towers each connect three large turbines to the buildings, the bridge-turbine combination measuring 29 metres in diameter. They are oriented towards the north, as the wind from the Persian Gulf is strongest in this direction. The sail shape on the sides of each building is designed to act as a wind funnel in the centre of the towers in order to cause the maximum amount of wind to flow through there. Wind tunnel testing of the system showed that the buildings create an "S" shaped stream, ensuring that any wind arrives at a 45° angle on either side of the central axis, creating a wind flow that remains perpendicular to the turbines.