Riyadh has gone from largely closed to international tourism to one of the region's most talked-about openings in under a decade. The contrast is the draw: centuries-old mud-brick forts sit minutes from some of the most ambitious modern architecture being built anywhere on Earth right now. It's not a polished, finished destination the way Dubai is — it's a capital actively rewriting itself in real time, which makes visiting now feel genuinely different from visiting in five years.