Diriyah
Cradle of the Saudi State
Portrait
Diriyah was the seat of the Al Saud and the alliance with Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab from 1744 until an Ottoman-Egyptian army razed it in 1818 and executed the ruler in Istanbul. The mud-brick At-Turaif district has been excavated and restored since 2010 as the origin story of the modern kingdom, and it is the country's first UNESCO site.