The town from where Saudi Arabia’s royal family originated tells a story filled with wonder and is now a popular tourist desitnation.

Al Diriyah is about 20km away from Riyadh, the capital and main financial hub of the Saudi kingdom. About 300 years ago, it birthed the movement of the House of Saud which took the region by storm to make it the oil-rich rapidly developing kingdom that it is today.

While Diriyah has slowly become a tourist spot as its connection with the royal family becomes popularised, this year’s Eid ul Azha brough massive number of tourists including a large number of Pakistanis.

The Al-Turaif district that houses the palace that was the Al-Saud family’s first seat of power has been declared a UN heritage site and tells the story of a grand past.

Visitors from Pakistan this year also experienced the museums in the city including rare manuscripts of the Holy Quran as well as coins, clothes and weapons from hundreds of years ago.

Many Pakistanis who had been living in the region for several years but visited Diriyah for the first time said they felt they had been ‘transported’ 300 years back.