Abraj Al-Bait (Makkah Clock Royal Tower)

Abraj Al-Bait stands directly south of the Masjid al-Haram, the Grand Mosque of Makkah in Saudi Arabia. It is part of the King Abdulaziz Endowment project, built to house and serve the millions of pilgrims who come for Hajj and Umrah. The complex was developed by the Saudi Binladin Group and built between 2002 and 2011 and opened in 2012, at a reported cost of about US$15 billion.

It was built on the site of the Ajyad Fortress, an 18th-century Ottoman citadel on a hill overlooking the mosque, which was demolished in 2002. The project was one of the largest in the history of the city.

The complex has seven towers containing hotels, apartments, a multi-level shopping mall, prayer halls and conference spaces. The central tower, the Makkah Clock Royal Tower, rises to about 601 metres, making it one of the tallest buildings in the world. Its four clock faces are each 43 metres across, the largest in the world, and can be seen from far across the city. The clock is topped by a spire and a gilded crescent. On some nights green and white lights on the tower mark prayer times. The upper floors hold the Clock Tower Museum, with exhibits on astronomy, timekeeping and the history of the tower.

Only Muslims may enter Makkah, so the complex can be visited only by pilgrims and Muslim travellers.

The shopping floors are open to the public, while the hotels and museum need bookings or tickets. The towers face the mosque plaza, so they are very crowded at prayer times, during Ramadan and in the Hajj season.

Clock faces, hands and LEDs in numbers

The clock section of the tower is 57 metres tall, and its roof sits about 450 metres above the ground. Each minute hand is 23 metres long and each hour hand 18 metres. Around two million LEDs light the four faces, and on a clear night the clock can be read from about 25 kilometres away, from almost anywhere in Makkah.

Floors, the Fairmont hotel and the clock museum

The Makkah Clock Royal Tower has 120 floors. Its main hotel is the Fairmont Makkah Clock Royal Tower, a five-star property whose upper rooms look straight down onto the Kaaba and the mataf. The Clock Tower Museum fills the top four floors, and the Clock Tower Mall below has more than 600 shops. The complex has 96 lifts and parking for over 1,000 cars.

A few minutes' walk to the Haram gates

Pilgrims choose these hotels because they sit closer to the Haram than almost anything else in the city. You can walk from the lobby to the mosque gates in a few minutes, which matters most for the elderly and for anyone doing several prayers a day in the mosque. Prices rise sharply in the last ten nights of Ramadan and during Hajj, when rooms facing the Kaaba are booked months ahead.

Lifts slow to a crawl just before and after each prayer, so allow extra time to get down from high floors. The mall's food court and supermarket are useful for families who want simple meals between prayers.