Dubai's most popular public beach

Situated next to Dubai Marine Beach Resort & Spa is one of Dubai’s most popular public beaches, the Jumeira Open Beach (also called ‘Russian Beach’). Considered clean, it draws expats of all nationalities and can get crowded at weekends. Favoured also for its fine strip of white sand is Umm Suqeim Beach, which lies not far from Jumeirah Beach Hotel. 

A popular paying beach club is the Jumeira Beach Park, which as its name suggests is half-park, half-beach, with good facilities including parasol and sunlounger hire. 

Lying around 500m/yds due east of the Jumeira Beach Park behind a large, fenced enclosure is the Jumeira Archaeological Site. It is not yet open to the public although special permits can be obtained from the Dubai Museum. The remains – just the foundations of buildings are visible – belie the importance of the site. Once an important caravan stop on an ancient trade route linking modern-day Oman with Iraq, artefacts excavated from the site date from the 3rd to 7th centuries AD, some of which are now displayed in the Dubai Museum.

Lying just over 1km (2/3 mile) to the south of the Jumeira Beach Park around 100m/yds east of Jumeira Road is the Majlis Ghorfat Um Al Sheef. Its main interest – besides its rarity value as one of the very few remaining historical buildings in the area – is as a traditional two-storey building, constructed (in 1955) of coral rock, gypsum and palm fronds (forming the roof). The architect of modern Dubai, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, spent summers here. Inside, the traditional majlis is worth a look, and outside the gardens have been laid out to demonstrate the traditional Arabian falaj irrigation method in which well water is conducted around a grid of channels.