Describing the Abu Dhabi edition of the Louvre as simply a museum doesn’t quite do it justice. This is a museum city, living on its own archipelago. Over fifty individual buildings comprising 23 separate galleries live together under their own sky, a 180-metre dome, all penned by Pritzker-prize winning architect Jean Nouvel.

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Eight geometric-patterned layers make up the dome structure, each aperture to the sun casting minutely different shadows on to the courtyards and buildings below. More than just an aesthetic exploration, the dome both shades visitors from the harsh sun, reduces energy consumption, and critically, protects the artworks that lie within from damage. Outside, water surrounds the disjointed buildings, lapping against their sides and flowing under the dome, letting cool air drift off in the breeze, rippling light.⁣

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Inside, works by Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko hang a few steps away from Matisse and Van Gogh. Elsewhere, exhibitions chart the very first steps of mankind. This one self-contained complex feels almost like a path from the past to our future - hard to ignore when underneath a cosmic dome, and in a city like Abu Dhabi - itself an island city with a prehistoric past, only recently risen from the sand with the help of architect Katsuhiro Takahashi in 1967.⁣

Words by Nat Twiss⠀⁣