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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.