Where to Stay in Madinah, Medina Region

What is Madinah known for?

Madinah is known above all as the second holiest city in Islam, home to the Prophet's Mosque at its centre. The city is the capital of Medina Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia. Its old name is Yathrib.

Around that central mosque gather the museums that keep the city's memory, among them the Al-Madinah Museum and the International Fair and Museum of the Prophet's Biography and Islamic Civilization, while the Hejaz Railway Museum recalls the line that once ran north through the desert to the city.

What are the main landmarks in Madinah?

Madinah gathers its landmarks around the Prophet's Mosque, the great mosque at the heart of the city and the reason so many come to it. The mosque stands at the centre. Close to it the museums hold the city's history, among them the Al-Madinah Museum, the museum of Taybah heritage, and the International Fair and Museum of the Prophet's Biography and Islamic Civilization, which set out the story of the city and the wider Hejaz.

The Hejaz Railway Museum keeps the memory of the railway that once linked Madinah to the north, its old station a landmark of that vanished line.

What is the history of Madinah?

Madinah is among the oldest and most important cities in Islamic history, and its long story is written into the ground of the Hejaz. Before that history the settlement was called Yathrib, an oasis town on the caravan routes of western Saudi Arabia. The name changed with the faith.

The city took the names al-Madinah an-Nabawiyyah and Taybah, and grew around the Prophet's Mosque that became its centre and the second holiest place in Islam. Its memory is kept close. The Al-Madinah Museum and the museum of Taybah heritage set out that past for the pilgrims and travellers who fill the streets around the mosque.

The city's more recent history runs along a railway. In the age of the great desert lines the Hejaz Railway reached Madinah from the north, and the Hejaz Railway Museum, housed in the old station, keeps the record of that line and the traffic it once carried across the sands. The railway did not last.

What remains is the museum and the station it occupies, a mark of the years when Madinah lay at the southern end of a track that ran down through the Hejaz. Around all of it the city has stayed what it long was, the capital of Medina Province and a place of pilgrimage set among the volcanoes and valleys of the mountains.

Where is Madinah?

Madinah lies at the core of Medina Province, in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia. The city sits on a broad plain ringed by the Hejaz Mountains, which rise around it and close off its wider horizon. Volcanoes stand near.

Dormant lava fields and older dormant volcanoes edge the valleys around the built-up ground, and empty valleys and stretches of farmland fill the space between the city and the surrounding hills. Only the central part of that spread is truly urban, the rest given over to mountain, valley, and field.

What is the climate of Madinah?

Madinah has a hot desert climate, set by its inland position among the Hejaz Mountains of western Saudi Arabia. Summers are long and very hot, with fierce dry heat settling over the plain and the surrounding valleys for months. Rainfall is meagre across this Hejaz plain.

What little falls comes mostly in the cooler part of the year, when the days ease and the nights over the desert around the city turn cold. The dry mountain air holds through most of the year across the Hejaz.

How do you get to Madinah?

Madinah draws travellers and pilgrims from across the Hejaz and beyond, and most reach it by air or road across the plain of Medina Province. The city has its own airport. Flights bring in pilgrims from within Saudi Arabia and abroad, while roads run in over the plain and through the passes of the Hejaz Mountains that ring the city.

In an earlier age the Hejaz Railway carried arrivals down from the north, a line now recalled only by the Hejaz Railway Museum in the old station near the centre.