8 places
The square fort where Sheikh Khalifa was born, with a glass exhibition hall inside the courtyard and a 21,000-palm oasis behind it.
Quieter than the big oasis, with a 1930s souq, a mud-brick tower turned arts centre and a 4,000-year-old tomb on its edge.
A public garden built around the Hili Grand Tomb, a 4,000-year-old ring of carved stone 12 metres across.
An 1890s mud-brick fort with a room of Wilfred Thesiger's Empty Quarter photographs, set in a park you can picnic in.
Shaded lanes run through 1,200 hectares of date palms watered by falaj channels that still work after 3,000 years.
One of the oldest and largest forts in the country, dating to the 16th century, on a rocky hill against the mountains.
Thirty rebuilt mud, stone and barasti buildings, watchtowers from the 1880s and a falaj-fed palm farm, free to wander in the Hajar.
The UAE's highest hilltop fort, rebuilt after 1819, looks over palm groves and the sea from the top of a steep stair.