Discover Middle East

A region where deep antiquity meets rapid modern reinvention — from Petra's rock-cut tombs and Persepolis's ancient columns, to Dubai's skyline and Doha's waterfront, with Jerusalem's layered religious history and Istanbul's straddling of two continents in between.

This site's own Middle East grouping spans a wide and genuinely varied slice of the region — the Gulf states, the Levant, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey — each offering a very different kind of trip, from a long weekend in a modern Gulf city to weeks tracing millennia of continuous civilization.

The Middle East, as grouped on this site, spans the Gulf states (United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman), the Levant (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Israel), Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and Turkey — a region whose modern borders span an extraordinary depth of continuous human civilization, from some of the world's earliest cities to today's newest skylines.

Few regions on Earth hold this much layered history: Mesopotamia (in modern Iraq) is often called the cradle of civilization, ancient Persia (modern Iran) built one of history's great empires, and the Levant carries millennia of Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic heritage still visible today. Alongside this depth, the Gulf states have transformed themselves within a single generation into some of the world's most modern, rapidly developing cities.

This is also one of the world's most religiously significant regions — the birthplace of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike, with sites across Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Saudi Arabia, and beyond holding central importance to billions of people worldwide.