We, Philipp and his son plus Randi and me, visited this site october. We had a rental and intended to see all the Saudia Arabia WHS’ plus most of the TWHS’ in an extended week. We met up late night in Riyadh airport, picked up the car and stayed overnight in a nearby hotel. The following morning, we headed for At-Turaif.

The parking is inconvenient a bit off the entrance. We parked in a parking garage which was convenient to avoid an overheated car, but we still had to walk to the site in the burning sun. I don’t remember exactly the temperature at that moment, but coming from norther Europe hitting 35-40 degrees Celsius is tough.

As previous reviewer says in his review you need a ticket to enter, but it is all online and free. It’s more like a registration. To start registration, you scan a QR code on a poster on the street outside the restaurant area. Only one of us scanned and registered all of us. After registration, we were free to roam (through the restaurant area and) into the ruin city. The only obstacle we had was we had one big camera, and we were not allowed to bring it into the site. We had to leave it at a counter in an office. Phones were all right, we could take the pictures we wanted with that device.

Our visit lasted for an hour and a half, and we could visit most parts, but there were areas still under construction. There were guides/guards all over, but they were overall friendly – even if we tried to trespass a bit here and there, for instance the living quarters inside.

As someone said before – they seem to overdo the restoration. The walls, doors and windows seem brand new (well the doors and windows surely are), but it all seems from today and not several hundred years old. Som parts were still ruins, but most of these areas were not accessible.

There were small museums “scattered around” and we visited three, but some museums were still under construction. A big plus is that the museums where air conditioned and they had free water bottles!

Overall, we were happy with this visit! It was a good start to our Saudi journey!