"On the sunbaked shores of the Arabian Gulf, a good spot to catch a breeze is under the 600-foot-wide metal dome that shades the Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. The surface of this giant, parasol-shaped roof is an intricate, 7,850-piece jigsaw of perforated aluminum and stainless-steel panels. Rays of light pierce through the gaps, falling like golden rain on the museum’s exterior walls. Inside, the 23 galleries are divided by narrow alleyways and plazas to evoke the look and feel of a shady medina. The exhibits in the Louvre are not arranged by region, civilization, or era but instead by theme. Each one of 12 “chapters,” as the galleries are called, has a universal idea behind it. There’s the birth of civilization; motherhood; the portrayal of power; and representations of the divine, which include, unusually for a cultural institution in an Arab country, icons of Judaism, among them a 13th-century funerary stele and a 15th-century Yemenite Torah." - John Arlidge
