Dubai Frame Tickets and Tours | GetExperience.com

The Dubai Frame is exactly what its name says: a rectangle of gold-clad steel standing 150 metres high and 93 metres wide in Zabeel Park, positioned so that the old city fills one side of it and the new one the other. It opened in 2018 after a decade of design and a lawsuit over authorship. Two vertical towers hold lifts; a horizontal bridge 93 metres long joins them at the top, and part of its floor is glass that turns opaque and then clear as visitors step onto it. Looking north you see Deira, the creek and the low neighbourhoods; looking south, the towers of Sheikh Zayed Road with the Burj Khalifa in the middle.

The visit is short and better organised than most. On the ground floor a gallery covers the city's history; the lift takes seventy-five seconds to the bridge; and the way down runs through a projection room imagining Dubai in fifty years. An hour covers it comfortably. It costs a fraction of the Burj Khalifa ticket and gives a more useful view of how the city is laid out, which is why guides often send people here first and to the tower afterwards. Zabeel Park around it is one of the few large green spaces in Dubai and is worth the extra half-hour in winter.

Practical. Late afternoon is the best slot: the light is behind you for the old city, and the towers light up before you leave. Tickets are cheaper booked online and there is a separate park entry fee, small but easy to forget. The glass floor is the queue point on the bridge; there is a solid walkway around it for anyone who would rather not. The metro Green Line stops at Al Jafiliya, about fifteen minutes' walk, which is fine in winter and not in summer. Haze in summer flattens the view, and after rain in January it is at its clearest.