A folio for each city

The City Folio publishes design-led monographs of cities: one issue per city, each a considered selection of interiors, restaurants, cafés and landmarks, studied through the materials they are made of and the light they hold.

Issue 01, Abu Dhabi, is a work in progress: the Landmarks chapter is published; the Interiors, Restaurants and Cafés chapters are forthcoming.

Entries are written from documented sources, which are listed on each page. Where a fact could not be verified, it is left out.

Images

Photographs on this site are from DCT Abu Dhabi MediaHub. A credit line appears beneath each photograph. Images have been resized and compressed for the web; otherwise they are unaltered, except for the Louvre Abu Dhabi photograph, which was cropped from a portrait frame to a landscape 3:2 frame so it fits the layout. No images on this site are AI-generated.

• Louvre Abu Dhabi — ©Department of Culture and Tourism, Abu Dhabi · Source: DCT Abu Dhabi MediaHub — Landscape 3:2 crop from the original portrait, framed to keep the full dome, the buildings and the kayakers.
• Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque — ©Department of Culture and Tourism, Abu Dhabi · Source: DCT Abu Dhabi MediaHub
• Qasr Al Watan — Photo: EMIC WORKS / ©Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi · Source: DCT Abu Dhabi MediaHub