Built in honor of the late father of the UAE - Sheikh Zayed, this is the largest mosque in the UAE. It's built entirely of marble from Italy, Greece and Brazil (plus some others). It holds the record for the largest dome in a mosque, the largest chandelier in a mosque and the largest single piece carpet in the world. I recommend you take a guided tour of this place, since the attention to detail is amazing and you will miss all of these small things if you just stroll through.
A few interesting facts:
- The marble in the courtyard is always cold, even if the ambient temperature is 40 degrees C.
- Most of the gold (and there is a lot) is 24 carat.
- It cost 1 billion dollars to built and it still isn't finished.
- The chandelier weighs 9.5 tones and is suspended from 3 steel cables, each capable of holding 11 tones.
- The carpet was made in Iran by 1200 weavers and was brought here in 9 separate pieces. It was then woven together on site by the same 1200 workers. Don't quote me on this but I think it weighs around 40 tones. It was made out of wool from New Zealand.
Make sure you check out the location and layout of the mosque in the satellite map above. Do you know which direction it's facing?
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