SOUK AND AL-QATTARA ARTS CENTRE

The old souk of Al Ain, which dates back to the 1930s, was restored in 2012. It now houses art and craft stores. Like the nearby Al-Qattara Fort, also recently restored, it serves as an exhibition hall for local artists. The Dry Studio is a classroom for learning music and crafts, while the Wet Studio offers drawing and painting classes. The center is equipped with a pottery workshop and a calligraphy workshop. A room is specially dedicated to the archaeological excavations carried out in this area. The various pieces found on this site indicate that Al Ain was an important trading city and that many transactions took place with Mesopotamia, Persia, India and Pakistan. When the Al Qattara Arts Center was established, archaeological excavations revealed a five-meter sequence of archaeological layers or "horizons" spanning the Late Islamic to Iron Age. Iron Age industrial facilities forming the first phase of this sequence are now on display in the archaeological basement. A permanent exhibition explains how archaeological sites are formed over time in a series of layers laid on top of each other. It also features key objects found in the different layers of the excavation, including a lion figurine from the Iron Age II period (1100-600 BCE) that was probably part of a large pottery vessel and is one of the finest decorated Iron Age ceramic figurines ever found in the United Arab Emirates.

The souk, which is not really a souk anymore, is therefore exciting to visit in more ways than one, but choose the time of day rather in the late afternoon and on weekends, especially on Saturdays if you don't want to wander through an empty gallery. On Fridays and Saturdays, there is also a market with local products and traditional clothes for sale: more than thirty stores inside and twenty outside. Once the visit is over, we recommend you to go to the oasis. From there, you will walk in 5 min to the Bin Fudhaid Al Darmaki house. The easiest way is to ask the guard for directions. By another way, we reach, in 15 minutes, the remains of the mosque Abdullah Bin Salem Al Darmaki as well as the foundations of the patrician house of this great family.