Hegra

Visited this site in January 2025. 
Day tour (95 SAR) remains the same as described by Tony, Els and Martina, covers 4 clusters and only one tomb (#26) can be visited inside. Nothing to add. 
After that I also took Hegra After Dark tour (200 SAR), which is offered at 18:00 and 21:00 daily except Sundays and Mondays. It is more atmospheric and entertainment experience rather than historical insight. You will be driven by a horse-drawn carriage to a fifth cluster not included into day tour, called Jebel Khraymat. The area is beautifully lit by many lamps. After all people are gathered, something like live performance involving about 20 dressed actors begins. The first part of the show starts in the semicircular square covered by the tombs and then proceeds in a “nabatean market” with more tomb facades on the background. Various traditional canapes, dates, sweets, drinks can be tasted during the show. After approximately 1.5 hours, visitors are brought back to the visitor center by the carriages.  
Another interesting historical tour is Dadan & Jabal Ikmah Tour (60 SAR). It doesn’t cover formally listed territory, but adds additional historical insight on Al Ula. The tour starts from Dadan visitor center with some archeological facts on display and viewing platform with binoculars towards Dadanitic rock-cut burial niches. Two famous tombs are flanked with a pair of guard lions each. The tombs were cut circa 500 years BCE. The bus then brings you to the ancient archeological site of Dadan with …

Visited in February 2024. Visiting Hegra and the nearby town of Al Ula is a reminder that Saudi Arabia is not yet ready for the mass tourism that it's hoping to achieve. I arrived to Al Ula by plane and took one of the official Al Ula taxes from the airport to my accommodation which was a van parked in someone's date palm farm. Finding mid-priced accommodation (budget accommodation is non-existent) is still very hard in this town and that might lead you to stay in fun places like a van! Most people from my flight seemed to opt for rental cars but I tried to survive without one. Careem was working now fine but you had to usually wait for some time for a pick-up.

So next morning I ordered a Careem ride to the Winter Park which I had read from everywhere is the place to start your visit to Hegra. After arriving to the Winter Park visitor centre I ended up being very confused how the ticket policy works. I was first told that everything is fully booked for the day but there were still places for "hop-on hop-off bus tour" of Hegra. As I only had one full day here I happily took that option. Then I was told that the shuttle buses from the Winter Park to Hegra are totally booked for the day and I have to find a taxi to take me there. All this sounded very strange to me considering I …

All the essentials have already been covered by the previous 6 reviewers, but as things change quickly in Saudi Arabia I’d like to add some specifics from the perspective of my November 2023 visit.

What’s in a name

The site was inscribed as “Mada'in Saleh”, but is now known as Hegra. There was an official name change to the WHS in 2021, and also on the ground you will see the signposting call it ‘Hegra’. Hegra is the Ancient Greek name of the site, while Mada'in Saleh goes back to the Ancient Arabs. Why did the Saudis change it? Was it to make it more attractive to an international audience? Or did they want to get rid of the association with the Quranic story where this was seen as a cursed area?

The standard tour

There seems to be only one standard tour available nowadays, which takes 2 hours and can be done either on a big bus or by jeep. The latter is much more expensive but the itinerary seems the same.

We (on the big bus) visited four components in the following order:

1. Jabal AlAhmar: a pretty rock with carved tombs all around.
2. Qasr AlFarid: this is the biggest, a stand-alone tomb. It’s also the only one which would benefit from a visit in the late afternoon because of the position of the sun.
3. Qasr AlBint: the complex with the ‘best’ decorated facades. Only here you may enter one …

Hegra is Saudi Arabia's paramount tourist attraction and one of the few boasting of an excellent infrastructure ready to handle mass tourism. Correction, it's actually the only place in Saudi Arabia where mass tourism is practiced. Tours are booked in advance and the choices are endless - just choose how much time and money you want to give Hegra. We opted for the classic three-hour guided bus tour, but you can spend a full day here, go privately on a jeep and have a picnic amid the desert sights.

The area of today's archaeological reserve was inhabited between the sixth and fourth centuries BC, according to inscriptions found on the rocks. It is from this period that the historical name Mada'in Saleh originates. Later it was one of the centres of the Lycian kingdom, and around the first century AD it was settled by the Nabataean civilisation, which transformed Hegra into a vibrant city, the second most important after Petra. They carved their typical tombs with monumental facades into the large rocks in the middle of the desert, which are a major attraction today. In addition, the Nabataeans created a complete irrigation infrastructure that used the water from the oasis and made it possible to grow crops. The Nabataean kingdom lay on the trade route and had a monopoly on the trade of spices, myrrh and frankincense. In 106 AD it was annexed to the Roman Empire and Hegra (along with her more famous sister Petra) became part of …

My impression of this site was personally 5-star, but I'm also relatively new to UNESCO sites and may not have a great standard for comparison.

I had just quit a job in Saudi Arabia and asked that my visa remain open a bit longer (since I'd never get one again), and immediately set my sights on Madain Saleh (the actual Nabatean part of the site). Getting there was not easy, especially since you need to somehow first get a Saudi visa - good luck if you're not on Hajj or an oil/diplomatic worker. A site visit permit was also required back in 2010.

From Riyadh, I flew to Medina, rented a car - carefully avoiding the Haram area where non-Muslims can't enter - and headed north. Or, that was the intent, since a white guy driving alone is uncommon enough that the National Guard stopped me while they figured out what to do. After a confusing phone call with one guardsman's brother, I learned I'd need a police escort to continue driving to Al-Ula, where the site is located. One hour and a lunch break later, I was following a rotating cast of police cars for the next four hours.

Once in Al-Ula, things were still weird: I couldn't leave my hotel "for my safety". At least the tour itself was wonderful: a personal guide met me at the hotel and we drove off to the site. Got to visit all the high points throughout the largely …

We felt lucky to have been able to get in to see this site in Feb 2020. It has been officially closed for quite a while and will continue to remain closed but during the Winter in Tantora festival in Al Ula the site was partially opened for tour visits. This involved registering and paying for a visit either online or in Al Ula where overpriced festival buses would transport you to the main north entrance. The old Al-Hijr railway station (part of its own Hejaz railway TWHS) is restored and being converted into a visitors centre and after a welcome tea and dates, we found ourselves funneled onto a different guided tour bus for a partial trip around the site.

On maps there is a road that makes a full loop of the site. We made 4 stops along the eastern semi-circle ending at the most famous Qasr Al-Farad tomb before returning the way we came. Seeing as how large an area this all is and the need for a vehicle to get around, I wouldn't be surprised if they maintained this type of tour bus set up as the mandatory way to visit in the future to both increase revenue and keep an eye on everyone. It has been many years since my visit to Petra but if memory serves me right, these tombs felt more numerous and spread out but generally smaller. We were told that archaeologists have recently discovered the residential portion of the city …

Mada'in Saleh is currently closed for ... getting ready for tourists? It says "closed for development" and the guide told me they will open it up for the general public sometime in 2020 but most of the places were available for visit with a few "renovation" piles of lights, planks, etc, and some areas are maybe off-limits and I didn't notice. A true marvel to visit nonetheless and harsh for them to close this off entirely. Comes to show that the Kingdom currently does not give a **** about tourism. However, you CAN visit if you are with a guide. They will arrange a visit for you and then it's even better because none of the visitors are here to spoil the fun - so maybe NOW is the time to try and visit?!

Stay overnight at Al Ula, the closest town with hotels. It is a long drive from Medina and you want to be here in the morning for the first light. All the rock formations and structures will be desert red and if you love taking photos you will love the first half an hour of light. Our tour started at the south gate which needs a 4WD going through the desert roads and ends up at the north gate.

All the tombs show marvelous carvings by the Nabataeans whose capital is Petra. To think it was done over 2000 years ago. Before coming the Qasr al-Farid is the main thing to see, and …

I visited Mada'in Saleh in December 2018 as part of a trip to Saudi Arabia for the inaugural Formula E race hosted in Riyadh. I took a day trip up to Al Oula where our group got permission to visit Mada'in Saleh.

(Mada'in Saleh is currently closed indefinitely for improvements, however, I didn't think the site was actually in that bad of shape. The roads and signs did need some upkeep, but the current conditions were more than passable for visitors. I've seen much worse at other sites around the world).

We had the entire facility to ourselves. There wasn't a single other visitor or staff member on the property that I could see. 

The site is most similar to Petra, as it was built by the same people during the same time period. However, the site is much more spread out than Petra is. You can see most everything at Petra with a good day of walking. To get between the sites at Mada'in Saleh, you really need a car. 

The biggest difference between the two sites is that Petra was an actual city, whereas Mada'in Saleh is more akin to a graveyard. Almost all of the structures were built as tombs. 

The area around Mada'in Saleh is very similar to what you will see in Wadi Rum in Jordan. Southern Jordan and Northern Saudi Arabia can sort of be considered a single geologic region. The Bedouin of Northern Saudi Arabia are similar to the Bedouin in …

A couple of weeks after I wrote this review, Saudi Arabia got its first WHS with the inscription of Al-Hijr Archaeological Site (as its nomination called it) - more commonly known as Madâin Sâlih. We were there in 2002 and found it an interesting place. It is set in the desert country of NW Saudi around 250kms from the Jordanian border. This provides a clue to its history:- It is most famously a Nabataean city, built as they expanded out of their home area around Petra and with its peak around 100BC -100AD. In fact its history reaches much further back but the main sites you will see are Nabataean and consist mainly of tombs (over 100!). Its location was well placed on the trade routes to from Syria to the Hadramaut and later for the pilgrimage route from Damascus to Mecca.

Generally its location and remains are less spectacular than Petra (it does however have its own “Mini Siq” passageway between the rocks!) but the tombs are better preserved. They all follow a similar design of a flat facade with a step motif above and a triangular portico above the doorway. Inside are funerary niches etc and some carvings. Apparently one of the unfinished tombs was important in “proving” that the rock carving started “from the top down”. Qasr Farad is particularly impressive being carved into a single rock outcrop and is usually chosen to feature in books/posters (and later reviews here!) about the site. Everything is very …