Dubai Museum

Housed in the city’s oldest building—the Al Fahidi Fort (built in 1787)—the Dubai Museum offers a sense of Dubai’s heritage as a fishing and pearl diving center. Other than exhibits of pottery, weapons, coins, documents, clothing, jewelry, and interactive installations, there are recreations of homes, schools, markets, and farms. Around you are lifelike models of the people who might have inhabited Dubai: blacksmiths, fishermen, pearl divers, and shipbuilders. It feels like having left behind the city of skyscrapers to step into a bygone era.