Al-Ula

Al-Ula is a city in Saudi Arabia's Medina Province, about 350 kilometers northwest of Medina in the Hejaz region, with 60,103 residents as of 2022. Settled since around 5000 BC and once capital of the ancient Lihyanite kingdom, it thrived as a market town on the incense trade route linking India and the Persian Gulf to the Levant and Europe; 22 kilometers to its north lies Hegra, Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, a Nabataean city of more than 2,000 year old rock cut tombs often compared to its sister city Petra in Jordan, and the surrounding region holds nearly 20,000 documented rock art panels including the inscriptions of Jabal Ikmah, added to UNESCO's Memory of the World register in 2023.