Alleys · Era 1890s
Art Alley
In the sikkas at the district's western edge, plaster walls become canvases. Murals, contemporary calligraffiti and installations — many of them born during the Sikka Art & Design Festival that Al Fahidi's lanes have hosted since 2011 — turn a stroll into a scavenger hunt for colour. Studios and small galleries open onto the alleys, and new pieces appear each season, so no two visits are ever the same. Come at golden hour, when the paint and the sand-lime walls glow together.
Art Alley: Nineteenth-Century Walls, Painted in the Present Tense
In Al Fahidi, a sikka is the narrow lane that runs between the houses — and it lent its name to one of the district's loveliest surprises: alleys whose gypsum walls have become living canvases. Since 2011, these lanes have hosted the Sikka Art and Design Festival, launched by the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority as a platform for emerging talent from the UAE and the wider Gulf. During each edition, the heritage houses and passageways turn into open-air galleries filled with murals, exhibitions, music and workshops. Better still, the art does not leave when the festival does: painted murals stay on the walls all year round, waiting to be discovered at every turn. Walk slowly as you move between shadow and light — Arabic calligraphy dancing across a wall here, portraits and geometric patterns answering the carvings of old teak doors there. A few steps away, long-established galleries such as XVA and The Majlis continue the same story indoors. This conversation between walls built in the late nineteenth century and art painted this year is the essence of the new Al Fahidi: a quarter that never froze at a single historical moment, but keeps lending its walls to each new generation. Bring your camera, and allow yourself to get lost. The best murals here are never the ones you plan to visit — they are the ones you stumble upon.