Mecca Becomes A Mecca For Skyscraper Hotels - Leila Fadel

At the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the booming call to prayer competes with the racket of construction. The Grand Mosque is the destination for the most sacred Muslim pilgrimage and it holds the Kaaba, the black cube of a building in the center of the mosque known to Muslims as the House of God.

But skyscraper hotels increasingly dominate the skyline, dwarfing the Great Mosque where worshippers gather, and angering those who seek to retain the city's history and traditional architecture.  Cranes fill the sky and soaring above it all is the Clock Tower Hotel, which reaches some 130 stories. To build it, the city literally blew up a mountain that once overlooked the Grand Mosque nestled in the valley between peaks.

This building spree has become a symbol of the transformation and commercialization of Mecca, the birthplace of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Hotel rooms with a Kaaba view are hot-ticket items.

When you enter the marble-covered plaza surrounding the mosque, to the left is the pathway that millions take to get their first glimpse of the Kaaba, an awe-inspiring sight for Muslims. To the right is a Kentucky Fried Chicken

There are tracts of land around the mosque where hundreds of simple homes once stood but were bulldozed to make room for multi-use construction projects to handle the pilgrims.

The mayor of Mecca, Osama al-Bar, is overseeing the expansion. He says the older structures needed to be destroyed to allow for larger buildings to accommodate the more than 15 million people who come each year, including the 2 million who converge on Mecca during the annual Hajj pilgrimage. -  Read More at NPR

Mecca Becomes A Mecca For Skyscraper Hotels