Four days in Dubai: the tallest building on earth, and the creek it grew out of

Start where the city did. Al Fahidi, still often called Bastakiya, is a quarter of coral-and-gypsum courtyard houses built around the turn of the twentieth century by Persian merchants from the town of Bastak, who were given land here in exchange for moving their trade. What makes it worth an hour is the wind towers: square open-sided chimneys on the roofs that catch any breeze and drop it down into the rooms, which is air conditioning that needs no electricity and works. The lanes are narrow, shaded and cool, and there are galleries, a coffee museum and a couple of courtyard cafes in among them.

Walk to the creek and take an abra across to Deira. It is a wooden boat with a diesel engine and a bench down the middle, it costs one dirham, and it has been the way across since long before the bridges. Ten minutes on the water gives you the whole old skyline: dhows, warehouses, minarets and, behind them, the towers.

On the Deira side, work through the souks. The Spice Souk is small, fragrant and half-covered, selling saffron, dried lemons, frankincense and rose petals by the scoop. The Gold Souk is five minutes further and is exactly what it sounds like: a covered lane of shop windows, several hundred of them, stacked with more gold than most national reserves. Go after dark when the shutters are up and the whole street glows. Nobody expects you to buy anything, but they will certainly try.

Start at the Museum of the Future, which opened in 2022 on the Sheikh Zayed Road and is the most interesting building in the city. It is a torus, a hollow ring standing on a green mound, clad in stainless steel and cut through with lines of Arabic calligraphy that are also the windows. Inside are themed floors on space, ecology and wellbeing that are more immersive installation than museum, and opinion on the contents divides sharply. The building does not: go for that, and book ahead.

Then Downtown for the tower. The Burj Khalifa is 828 metres, which is not merely the tallest building in the world but the tallest by a margin of more than 300 metres over anything before it, and it opened in January 2010 at the bottom of a property crash. The lift to the observation deck on the 124th floor takes about a minute. Book a slot at least a few days out and pick either the first hour of the day, which is cheap and hazy, or the half hour before sunset, which costs the most and is worth it.

Come down and stay for the fountain. It sits in the lake between the tower and the mall, runs on the half hour once it is dark, and shoots water to something like 150 metres to a soundtrack that ranges from Arabic classics to opera. It is free, it is genuinely spectacular, and the best place to watch it from is the walkway on the far side of the lake rather than the mall terrace, where you will be paying for a table.

Jumeirah Mosque is the one non-Muslims are invited into, and the visit is a guided one run by a cultural centre whose whole purpose is answering questions from outsiders. The mosque itself was finished in 1979 in a medieval Fatimid style, in pale stone with twin minarets, and it photographs better than almost anything else in the city. What makes it worth going to is the hour of frank conversation about prayer, fasting and Emirati life that comes with the tour. Robes are lent at the door, women cover their hair, and there is a session most mornings.

Ten minutes along the coast is the Etihad Museum, which opened in 2017 on the spot where the rulers of six emirates signed the union agreement on 2 December 1971 after the British withdrew from the Gulf. The building is shaped like the manuscript of that agreement, and the exhibition covers the negotiations, the personalities and the pre-oil country in a way that is unexpectedly candid. It is the single best hour for understanding why this place looks the way it does.

In the evening go to the far end of the strip. Dubai Marina is an artificial canal cut two kilometres inland and lined with towers, and it is the most successfully urban part of new Dubai: a promenade you can walk end to end, restaurants on the water, boats going out, and a density that the rest of the city does not have. Whether you find it soulless or exhilarating tends to depend on whether you see it by daylight or after dark. Go after dark.

Finish at the Dubai Frame, which is exactly what its name says: two 150 metre towers joined by a bridge at the top, standing in Zabeel Park, opened in 2018 and positioned so that from the bridge you look north over the old creek districts and south over the Sheikh Zayed Road skyline. It is a piece of pure civic showmanship and it works, because it makes the point of the whole trip in one turn of the head: fifty years between the two views. There is a glass floor panel in the bridge, a gallery below it about the city before oil, and a queue that is worst in the middle of the day.

The airport is fifteen minutes away, so this fits comfortably before an afternoon flight. If you have longer, Zabeel Park itself is one of the few genuinely pleasant public spaces in the city and a good place to sit before you go.