Photo: Aeroid (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio tour of Abu Dhabi by taxi or car, from the island's first watchtower to the museums of Saadiyat. The stops lie in three areas many kilometres apart: downtown and the Corniche, the Ras Al Akhdar headland, and the Grand Mosque with Saadiyat Island; the Grand Mosque and Saadiyat are about twenty kilometres apart. Ride between the stops and listen on foot at each one. It begins at Qasr Al Hosn, which grew from a watchtower built to guard a freshwater source found around 1761 into the fort and palace of the island's rulers, and the Cultural Foundation opposite, opened in 1981 as the national library and cultural centre. Then the eight-kilometre Corniche on its reclaimed land, and the Heritage Village across the Dhow Harbour, a reconstruction of pre-oil life with its barasti huts, souq and pearl-diving gear. At Ras Al Akhdar stand Emirates Palace, built from 2001 to 2005 as a government guest palace and hotel, and Qasr Al Watan, the working palace opened to the public in 2019. The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, opened for worship in 2007 with more than 1,000 columns in its arcades, faces Wahat Al Karama, the national memorial to those who died serving the UAE. On Saadiyat Island the tour ends with Jean Nouvel's domed Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Zayed National Museum by Foster + Partners and the Abrahamic Family House, where a mosque, a church and a synagogue share one garden.
11 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 225 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 7 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Qasr Al Hosn, Cultural Foundation, Abu Dhabi Corniche, Heritage Village.
Emirates Palace, Qasr Al Watan.
Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Wahat Al Karama, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Zayed National Museum, Abrahamic Family House.
The watchtower raised to guard the island's fresh water around 1761, which became the fort and palace of Abu Dhabi's rulers and is now a museum.
The Palace of the Nation, a working palace for state functions, whose Great Hall rises to a 37-metre dome; open to the public since March 2019.
A working place of worship, opened on Eid Al Adha in 2007, with four minarets of about 107 metres and more than 1,000 columns in its arcades.
Jean Nouvel's 180-metre dome of 7,850 stars, filtering a 'rain of light' over a museum-city of low white buildings set in water.
The national memorial of 31 leaning tablets by Idris Khan, facing the Grand Mosque across a reflecting pool.
A mosque, a church and a synagogue in three matching cubes around a shared garden, opened in 2023.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 11 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 11 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Abu Dhabi — Qasr Al Hosn, the Corniche and the Grand Mosque, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
11 narration points, including Qasr Al Hosn, Cultural Foundation, Heritage Village, Emirates Palace and Qasr Al Watan. That is about 24 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~5 hours by taxi or car between three areas total, but you walk at your own pace. 11 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.