PALACE FORT THAT KEPT A COUNTRY’S HERITAGE SECURE WILL OPEN ITS DOORS ON UAE’S PAST AND ITS FUTURE
▶ After a decade of renovation and conservation, Abu Dhabi’s best-loved historical site, Qasr Al Hosn, opens on Friday. Rupert Hawksley takes a tour
Qasr Al Hosn is about to enter the next phase of its extraordinary history. On Friday, after a decade of meticulous conservation and renovation, Abu Dhabi’s oldest heritage site, parts of which date to the 1760s, will reopen as a museum alongside a rebuilt National Consultative Council building and Cultural Foundation.
Here, in the heart of this ever-changing city, is a physical timeline of the story of Abu Dhabi, a tranquil oasis bathed in Emirati culture.
It comprises an inner fort, or hosn, built with coral and sea stone by Sheikh Shakhbut bin Dhiyab in 1795, and an outer palace, or qasr, built by Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan in 1939.
For decades, Qasr Al Hosn was home to the ruling family but by the 1960s, and after further renovations, this beautiful collection of understated buildings became home to the National Centre for Documentation and Research.
It has remained a resilient symbol of Abu Dhabi’s history, as the city we know today has so quickly grown up around it.
The Cultural Foundation was established in 1981 by the Founding Father, Sheikh Zayed, to encourage creativity in the capital. There was a National Library, a performing arts wing and exhibition spaces.
“Many of us had our first piano or art lessons there,” says Salama Al Shamsi, the new director of Qasr Al Hosn.
Now it has been transformed with a new Visual Arts Centre, opening on Friday, and a theatre and children’s library to follow next year.
Before Qasr Al Hosn’s opening, The National was given an extensive tour of the site as the finishing touches were being made.
It is a 400 square metre development split diagonally. Qasr Al Hosn, with its textured white walls and fragments of sea shells sparkling in the sunshine, is on one side.
The cavernous Cultural Foundation, modern and geometric in form, is on the other.
Between the buildings is a large water feature surrounded by shaded places to sit, and a mangrove garden. The idea is to allow visitors to Abu Dhabi to cross the line between traditional and modern.
It is certainly impressive to stand by the Cultural Foundation and peer back in time, imagining a way of life unrecognisable in Abu Dhabi today.
The oldest structure in Qasr Al Hosn is the watchtower, built in 1760 to 1761 by Sheikh Dhiyab bin Isa, leader of the Baniyas tribe. Layers of modern-day render and gypsum have been peeled away to reveal the original stonework.
In one stunning spot, you can trace Qasr Al Hosn’s architectural history from the 1700s right through to the present day. The watchtower, a 1940s outer palace wall, the 1980s reinstatement of the inner fort, and finally a skyscraper peeking into your eye line – about 250 years of progress in a single frame.
At Qasr Al Hosn, every effort has been made to preserve original features. Mangrove poles used in the 1940s in the corridors of the south wing were embedded in concrete in the 1980s era and could not be removed.
To ensure they remained part of Qasr Al Hosn, tubes were attached to the ends of the poles and preservatives drip-fed into the wood to conserve them. It might have been easier to just replace the poles but this 10-year project has been about preservation, not destruction.
This attention to detail pays off. It allows us to understand how previous generations lived and worked, and you can feel their presence here.
One of the first rooms visitors see in the outer palace shows how Emirati architecture – those slab-like stone-walls, say, and the wooden lintels wrapped in date palm rope – has evolved to withstand the hostile summers.
And so, as you move through the cloisters into each room, you can feel the cooling effect of the substantial walls. They act as a thermal store during the day by soaking up the Sun’s rays then, as temperatures drop at night, radiating that same heat back into living spaces.
Ghati structures, which are wind-catchers integrated into the architecture, also help to circulate air by funnelling any breeze from the courtyard into the building’s interior.
The wonderful thing about Qasr Al Hosn is that it does not feel like a museum. Yes, there will be displays of artefacts, as well as re-enactments of rituals, but this is a more immersive experience.
To spend time within these white-washed walls is to step back in history, to experience a living, breathing building from another era.
Qasr Al Hosn is about the resuscitation of a place and way of life that deserves to be celebrated.
Built more than 250 years ago, Qasr Al Hosn had begun to show its age. Now it has had the facelift it so richly deserves.
Abu Dhabi’s past is secured. In fact, it has become a central part of its future.
At Qasr Al Hosn, every effort has been made to preserve the original fixtures and features