The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, "Ithra", is a Saudi Aramco initiative in Dhahran beside Dammam Well No. 7. King Abdullah laid its foundation stone in 2008, King Salman opened it on 1 December 2016 and it opened to the public in 2018, designed by Norway's Snøhetta as a cluster of stacked rocks, and TIME magazine named it among the world's 100 greatest places in 2018.
Facilities
- A four-storey library of more than 500,000 books, a 900-seat theatre on three levels and a 300-seat cinema.
- The Ithra Museum, the Kingdom's first Children's Museum, the Energy Exhibit, the Idea Lab, the Great Hall and the 18-storey Ithra Tower.
Its events
The centre receives about a million visitors a year and hosts the Saudi Film Festival (12th edition in 2026), the annual iRead Marathon, the Founding Day celebrations that drew 30,000 visitors in 2026, the "Tanween" exhibition and the Ithra short-play competition.
