Rain of light

A stunning piece of architecture in its own right, the newly opened Louvre Abu Dhabi is already proving itself as a cultural oasis to rival any museum in the world

When I arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, I found the city quite different from what I had expected - a place full of historical sites revealing the exotic flavors of the Middle East.

Instead, for a city that only started to boom after the 1970s, Abu Dhabi appears a little too "new" for my tastes. What continues to pass by my car window are any array of contemporary shopping malls and luxury hotels, one after another.