Doha is Stunningly Pretty at Night

Couples and friends trek along the crescent towards to view the back of the Museum from land’s end where an artwork of seven, forty foot tall rusting iron beams stands in the clearing and forms a hollowed obelisk with a heptagon opening to the blue skies.

Just beyond, perhaps two kilometers across on the far side of the bay, the entire vista of Dafna – the New Doha – shimmers, a tribute to the daring and determination of the Qatari Royal Family and business tycoons to transform the once desert flatlands and sand dunes into the towering skyscrapers of a financial and new downtown district. It’s reminiscent of looking across the Huangpu River from the Bund at the New Shanghai in Lujiazui, Pudong anchored by the iconic 468 meter tall Oriental Pearl TV Tower.

Except in Dafna, the centerpieces are the Al Mirqab Tower; the Salam Tower, the ball-like pavilion in between; the semi-circular Doha Tel tower, and the World Trade Center with its hovering disk at top. To the sides, the towers have impressive crowns, and each vies with the other for architectural distinction, reflecting the creative flair of world-renowned architects who were given a chance to create a masterpiece of unusual geometries with hefty budgets. Two blocks away, across the mall where the French grocery retailer Carrefour is the busiest main anchor, a golden globe twenty stories up bridges and connects two slender towers.  Even now, construction continues on several more towers and a multi-use, residential complex is coming out of the ground next to the Sheraton.

But what impresses by day turns into a carnival of festive of lights by night. The towers of Dafna come alive with lights that adorn the facades, against a dark black sky, as if some amusement show was live on a screen. On Thursday and Friday nights, spectators line up along the Corniche, especially at the vantage point behind the Museum to be entranced by the dancing red, yellow, blue lights playing on the towers across the bay. The dancing light show goes on till almost midnight on the weekends.

In what must surely be a first, the entire fifty-story facade of the baton-like Al Mirqab Tower, all the way to the top of its antenna mast, is covered in orange LED lights, turning on and off in a computerized sequence. The conical Salam Tower, pinched at the middle, affectionately called the Tornado (its twin is being completed next to it), is criss-crossed by blue LED strips that also change to give the feel of a whirling column. And the disk atop the World Trade Center comes to life with LEDs that create a pattern of starbursts in changing colors and flash the name of the building. A blue LED strip defines the curve of the nearby Doha Tel Tower, with its floors dissected by orange LED strips, making it look like a cut slice of an orange. On both sides of the centerpiece, other towers have crowns that glow in floodlight colors, and every floor of the pyramidal Sheraton Hotel is ablaze in yellow light.

Across the bay, in the Old City stays lit all night long. The spiraling single minar by the Souq Waqif radiates in yellow light; as does the Museum of Islamic Art, a testament to the creative flair of world-renowned architect I. M. Pei. Nearby the Clock Tower and Al Koot Fort are set off in light and the Diwan Emiri, the walls of the immense rectangular Royal residence, are bathed in white floodlight.

On a dark, moonless night, the dark bay waters lapping gently at the shoreline, sitting on the seawall and hearing voices in the many languages of the diaspora that lives in Doha, you forget where you are and get mesmerized by the beauty and playfulness of this extravagant light show and architectural showpieces, truly a feast for the eyes.