These MENA Walls Tell Stories Beyond the Landmarks

In Beirut’s Gemmayze and Mar Mikhael, the walls tell the story of a city that has never stayed still. Between cafés, old balconies and narrow streets, colourful murals, stencils and graffiti turn the neighbourhoods into an open-air gallery, often touching on politics, identity, resistance and everyday life. Wander through the area on foot and you’ll find something different around every corner, from bold paintings to sharp slogans that capture the mood of the city. It’s a glimpse into Beirut beyond its landmarks, where history, frustration and creativity are all written directly onto the walls.

Rabat’s Jidar Street Art Festival has been filling the city with huge murals for more than a decade, with works scattered across neighbourhoods like Hassan, Agdal, Yacoub El Mansour and Youssoufia. Many of the murals respond to the character of the neighbourhood they sit in, drawing on its architecture, history, textures or everyday life rather than feeling like artworks simply placed onto a wall. The best way to see them is on foot, following the city’s streets and looking up as the walls change from one neighbourhood to the next.

For street art in Amman, head to Jabal Al Weibdeh, one of the city’s older, more bohemian neighbourhoods, where murals pop up along its steep residential streets and around its cafes and stone buildings. One of the highlights is the Al Kalha Stairs, where a once-ordinary shortcut between Downtown and Weibdeh has been turned into an open-air gallery, with murals celebrating Arab music, literature, women and regional identity. It’s an easy way to see the more creative side of Amman while walking between two very different parts of the city.

On Djerba Island, the village of Erriadh is home to Djerbahood, an open-air street art project that brought 150 artists from 30 countries together to paint more than 250 works across the village. The murals range from bold, graphic pieces to intricate paintings and designs that incorporate doors, arches and the rough white walls of the old buildings. Some are playful and purely visual, while others touch on local life, politics and identity. There’s no set trail through Djerbahood, so wandering its narrow streets and stumbling across the next piece is part of the experience.

Tunis Village in Fayoum is known for its pottery, but its walls have their own story to tell. Colourful murals cover homes, shopfronts and walls throughout the village, with paintings of Egyptian faces, plants, animals and geometric patterns sitting alongside the pottery workshops. The street art grew out of projects including New Walls, which brought 15 Egyptian and international graffiti artists to Tunis Village in 2015, while later community projects saw residents open up their own homes to artists. Today, you can spot murals as you walk through the village, tucked between its pottery studios, homes and dusty lanes.

Block 338 in Adliya is one of the places to look for street art in Bahrain, with an outdoor graffiti wall at ABCAD (Al Bareh Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture) adding a more informal edge to the area’s gallery scene. The wall gives local artists space to experiment outside the gallery setting, while the surrounding streets have become a backdrop for Bahrain’s growing contemporary art scene. It’s worth wandering beyond the main restaurant strip and checking the side streets for the works tucked around the block.

Along 2nd of December Street in Satwa, the Dubai Street Museum covers building façades with murals inspired by the UAE’s history and heritage. The 2016 project brought together local and international artists, resulting in 16 murals depicting everything from falcons and abra boats to traditional clothing, games and Arabic calligraphy. The artworks vary widely in style, from photorealistic pieces to bold patterns and surreal imagery, making the street worth walking from one end to the other.

In Al Khobar’s old neighbourhood, Aqair Street is lined with colourful murals painted by more than 20 Saudi artists. The project came together in 2018, with the artists working across the street for 10 days and turning its ageing walls into a mix of large-scale paintings and illustrations. It’s a fairly unexpected sight in this part of the city, and one of the places where you can see Saudi street artists putting their own stamp on the urban landscape.