In the early 2000s, the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, began implementing a plan to transform his emirate into one of the main centers of world tourism. One of the points of this plan was the construction of a new area - Dubai Downtown, which includes more than 100 residential and office buildings, hotels, the largest shopping center, impressive fountains and many other projects. But the key element of the new area was to be the world's tallest skyscraper.

2003 Burj Khalifa will be built on this site

In the spring of 2002, Dubai-based construction company Emaar approached architect Adrian Smith with a proposal to design the tallest building in the world. Adrian Smith was chosen for his Jin Mao skyscraper, built in the heart of Shanghai. The original design was 518 meters high, enough to overtake the then record holder Taiwan's Taipei 101 skyscraper, which is 509 meters high. But at the initial stage of construction, the project was changed at least 7 times, the latest options provided for a height of 705 and 750 meters. Smith was not happy with the constant demands to change the design and proposed 5 final versions of the tower, which would not be changed. Emaar chose a project with a height of 828 meters.
The project started under the name Burj Dubai, construction works started in January 2004.


In December 2004, the foundation of the tower was completed.

It took almost a year to construct the first 10 floors of the building. September 2005:

A special grade of concrete was developed especially for the Burj Khalifa, which can withstand temperatures up to +50 °C for a long time. It was poured only at night, and ice was added to the solution. Otherwise, too high a temperature would not allow the concrete to gain the necessary strength when hardening. April 2006:

The average speed of tower construction was 1-2 floors per week. October 2006:

October 2007: Burj Khalifa reaches 160 floors, followed by construction of a 200-meter steel spire.

Glass designed specifically for the Burj Khalifa will transmit enough light, but at the same time reflect some of the heat, which will significantly reduce air conditioning costs. In addition, they must withstand enormous wind loads on the tower. March 2008.

We climb the tallest building in the world - the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai! How much does a tour to the observation deck cost? Where to buy tickets and how to save? Read our review and advice.

It seems that the Arabs, when building the Burj Khalifa skyscraper, decided to collect all the titles of “the most”: this is the tallest ground-based structure in the history of mankind, the building with the largest number of floors, the fastest elevator, the highest Observation deck etc.

Information about Burj Khalifa Tower

The height of the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai is 828 meters, the number of floors is 163, the elevator speed is 18 m/s (according to other sources - 10 m/s). The elevator takes you to the 124th floor in a minute; in the cabin there is a board with the floor countdown.

The dream of almost all tourists in Dubai is to climb this luxurious and breathtaking building. True, no one will allow mere mortals to reach the very top. The maximum height accessible to tourists is 555 meters, or the 148th floor. But the most visited floors are 124 and 125 (456 meters). It is on these three floors that the observation decks are located At the Top And At the Top Sky where tickets are sold.

Burj Khalifa is a city within a city: there are offices, apartments, a hotel, restaurants, shopping centers and so on. In front of the building is the famous dancing fountain, which draws crowds with its performances. Adjacent to the skyscraper is the equally famous Dubai Mall shopping center.

(Photo © tucotuti / flickr.com / License CC BY-NC 2.0)

Where to buy tickets for Burj Khalifa in Dubai?

Advantages of purchasing on the official website: cheap (from 135 dirhams), you can buy tickets to the 148th floor or choose a promotion. For example, buy skyscraper + aquarium combo tickets. Website in English.

Advantages of purchasing on Sputnik: more expensive (from 180 dirhams), but in Russian. Can't select combo.

We bought tickets for Burj Khalifa on the official website. We took the combo - tower (124th and 125th floors) + aquarium. For two it turned out to be 390 dirhams.

Here are the prices for tickets to Burj Khalifa on the official website:

Interesting video! TV presenter and blogger Anton Ptushkin takes a video tour of the rich life in Dubai:

Buy tickets for the Burj Khalifa in advance, rather than at the ticket office in the Dubai Mall - it’s much cheaper! After payment, the voucher will be sent by email. You need to print it out and exchange it for a ticket at the ticket office.

What time should I choose? If you want to visit the skyscraper during the daytime, we recommend taking tickets for 8:30 or 9:00 - there are still few people at this time. At 10 and 11 a.m., the sites are already crowded: all the glass is covered with tourists taking selfies, someone is broadcasting live on Instagram, and queues are forming.

Prime time from 16:00 to 18:00 - the most popular time (and the most expensive tickets). You can see the sunset, the dancing fountain and the lights of the city at night. However, can you imagine the crowd at the venues? And the fountain is beautiful from below. If you really want to look at the fountain not from the ground, go up to the balcony of the Apple Store in the Dubai Mall.

Come early. We arrived half an hour before and they let us in early. During the day and evening, it is better to arrive at least an hour in advance, as there is a queue at the ticket office and separately at the elevator.

How to get to Burj Khalifa in Dubai?

The exact address of the skyscraper is: 1 Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Boulevard, Dubai. You can take the metro to the station Burj Khalifa/Dubai Mall. Then follow the signs to the Dubai Mall - along the covered walkway. Once inside the mall, follow signs for Burj Khalifa again. Next, you will reach the ticket office and go up to the elevator.

There is a small queue at the elevator; about 10 people go in at a time. In a minute you will rise to the 124th floor, where there is an open terrace with glazed walls. There is also an observation deck on the 125th floor, but it is closed. We were not on the 148th floor.

Hotel in Burj Khalifa in Dubai

If you want to have a blast, then check into the 5-star (who would doubt it) Armani Hotel Dubai 5*. It occupies 11 floors of a skyscraper. It has excellent reviews - 9.1 out of 10. A double standard costs only 35 thousand rubles!

Our review of the skyscraper

Is it worth a visit? Undoubtedly! It's expensive, but you won't regret it. It is so high that your neck starts to hurt when you look at it. To take a photograph of a skyscraper, you have to get smart.

If you don't like being in a crowd, come early in the morning - that's what we did. After 10 am, haze appears and visibility decreases. At sunset and at night it is beautiful, but expensive and crowded. Someone in the reviews complained that night view inferior to the morning one - the lights are like lights, the view is almost like from an airplane window.

Photo of Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai

On January 4, 2010, the tower was opened by the ruler of the emirate, Mohammed bin Rashed Al Maktoum. Burj Khalifa In Dubai. At first it was called Burj Dubai, but then it was renamed in honor of the President of the UAE, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

History of the tower's construction

Plans for the construction of the tallest building in the world were announced back in 2002. It was planned that the tower would become a key element of the area under construction and would attract tourists from all over globe. The general contractor of the building was the South Korean company Samsung Engineering, and the developer was the Dubai-based Emaar.

The construction of the tower took six years and required about one and a half billion dollars. By the way, they paid for themselves in a record short time - 1 year.

While still under construction, the building's space was sold at $40,000 per square meter. The observation deck has also gained enormous popularity; you can now get to it by purchasing a ticket. Construction of the tower began in 2004. The building was erected quite quickly: one or two floors every week.

A special brand of concrete, developed specifically for the Burj Khalifa, can withstand very high temperatures - up to plus 50 degrees Celsius. It was poured only at night, adding ice to the solution. Having reached the one hundred and sixtieth floor inclusive, the concrete work was completed. Next, according to the plan, a spire was assembled from metal structures, the height of which was one hundred and eighty meters.

Much attention was paid to the fire safety system, which makes it possible to evacuate everyone in the building in no more than thirty-two minutes.

In the spring of 2006, the brutality of the guards provoked a pogrom at the construction site future tower Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Two and a half thousand workers, unable to tolerate the nagging of the guards, beat them, and then, in a fit of anger, began to destroy the construction headquarters, burn branded cars, destroy equipment, and break into safes. The next day they demanded that the employer, Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke, raise wages and improve working conditions, otherwise they threatened to go on a long-term strike. The workers were also joined by numerous construction workers of the new airport terminal.

It turned out that the height of the tower could be higher. Surprisingly, the endless upward growth was stopped not by a technical, but by an economic reason: in order to find funds to continue construction, it was necessary to sell a large amount of residential space. Perhaps that is why this building has such a slender silhouette.

The tower was planned to open on September 9, 2009, together with the Dubai Metro. However, the developer's financial problems did not allow this to happen. The solemn event took place in early January of the following year.

Features of the skyscraper project

The Burj Khalifa tower (its height, by the way, is 828 meters) was built according to the “city within a city” project, the author of which was Adrian Smith, an American architect with experience in designing similar structures.

Being in fact the core element of the new business center in Dubai, the building was created according to the principle of a vertical city. The floors in it are arranged in blocks and have different functions. Thirty-five of them are given to offices, thirty-seven to hotel rooms and apartments, the design of which was developed by Giorgio Armani himself.

There are shopping centers and about nine hundred apartments. The hundredth floor with three apartments of 500 square meters each was purchased by the Indian billionaire B. R. Shetty.

The artificial tower rising above the main building, in addition to its decorative function, also has a communication function, as it is equipped with modern telecommunications equipment. Three floors underground are occupied by a parking lot that can accommodate three thousand cars. A 61 meter long turbine is installed, rotated by the wind, and solar panels with an area of ​​approximately 15 thousand meters. All this was done so that the tower could independently produce electrical energy for itself.

The building was equipped with special solar protection and reflective glass panels that reduce indoor heating. This, in turn, reduced the need for air conditioning. The building's air conditioning system itself is quite unique. Air flows are carried out throughout the tower from bottom to top. In this case, underground modules and sea water are used for cooling.

The building has about sixty elevators reaching speeds of up to 65 km/h. In less than a minute you will be at the top of the tall building in the world.

The tourist part of the tower has magnificent interiors. On the one hundred and twenty-second floor there is the Atmosphere restaurant with eighty seats.

At one hundred and twenty-three and one hundred and twenty-four there is a lobby and a wonderful observation deck. The latter is located at an altitude of five hundred and five meters from the base. Most of it is glazed. Visitors have the opportunity to view the surrounding area through electronic telescopes.

In addition to the real picture, a recording of the historical, day and night panoramas of Dubai is viewed through computers with cameras installed on the floor.

You can stay on the observation deck as much as you like, but getting there is not so easy. It is advisable to purchase tickets in advance; they sell out very quickly. The observation deck, accessible to tourists, offers a magnificent view of the city. You can explore its old part, the port, Dubai Creek, the airport, Sharjah.

In front of the famous tower there is a huge (12 hectares) artificial lake, which houses a beautiful musical fountain, illuminated by 6,600 light sources and 50 spotlights. The length of this majestic source is two hundred and seventy meters, the height of the jets is one hundred and fifty. The music played consists of Arabic and world works.

The Burj Khalifa in the video is a magnificent sight. But it’s even more amazing to see all this beauty with your own eyes by visiting the world’s tallest skyscraper in Dubai.

Just a couple of decades ago camels were happily galloping along the dunes here, but now the former desert is filled with glass towers of skyscrapers. The favorite brainchild of the Emir of Dubai Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the new business center of the city, 2 square kilometers of luxury offices, apartments, hotel rooms, shops and entertainment facilities. The symbol of the new destiny of the capital of the emirate, which wanted to turn from a provincial raw materials appendage into the capital of the world, was to become the Burj Dubai skyscraper. Two years after the completion of the high-rise building, it still remains only the personification of a monstrous bubble in the local real estate market, which almost sent its creators around the world. Blogger Darriuss talks about the difficult fate of the tallest building in the world.

Back in the 1960s, Dubai looked something like this, and it seemed that nothing foreshadowed the transformation by Allah of a forgotten run-down town on the shores of the Persian Gulf into a fashionable metropolis.

The capital of the unknown emirate was ruled by the British imperialists; electricity and telephone communications appeared here only in the 1950s, and the main content of the life of the local inhabitants was hatred of the neighboring, slightly more successful emirate of Abu Dhabi. Even pearls, the production of which Dubai flourished somewhat in the 1920s, were no longer needed by anyone.

But in 1971, oil was discovered here. And although in significantly smaller quantities than in the same unloved Abu Dhabi, this was enough for the population of Dubai to grow more than 3 times from 1968 to 1975, mainly due to the influx of guest workers from India and Pakistan. After an initial period of capital accumulation, when local camel breeders suddenly became rich and began to actively embrace the benefits of civilization and explore the world beyond their own tent, in the 1990s Dubai began to rapidly develop as the economic center of the region, which was facilitated by general tensions in the Persian Gulf, where Dubai remained an island. stability, and successful friendship with well-chosen world gendarmes. Ultimately, thanks to the grand discovery of unknown bearded geologists with a guitar, just 40 years after it, Dubai began to look strong and prosperous.

In 1998, Emaar Properties, a newly formed development company whose main shareholder is the government of the Emirate of Dubai, began work on its most ambitious project. On two square kilometers of desert, previously occupied by a military base, construction began on a new business center in Dubai, called “Downtown” according to the American model. For $20 billion, they built not a microdistrict of panel houses for those in need of improved living conditions, but a whole series of residential complexes, business centers, high-rise hotels and, finally, the world's largest shopping and entertainment center, Dubai Mall, with a total area of ​​1.2 million ( !) square meters, of which 1,200 stores occupied only 350 thousand “squares”. This is what “Downtown Dubai” looked like on a model made in the workshops of the Dubaigrado Design Institute.

Plan of the new center of Dubai. The massive building on the right side of the render is the Dubai Mall.

The main character of “Downtown Dubai” was to be a skyscraper designed on a peninsula in an artificial reservoir, where a huge fountain complex was later built. The high-rise building, in which it was planned to house hundreds of thousands of square meters of offices, apartments, hotel rooms and public premises, according to the investors’ idea, had to not only be the tallest in the world, but also reliably and with a margin exceed the record height of 509 meters, in addition It has been held by the Taipei 101 tower in Taipei for six years now. Moreover, the Dubai sheikhs decided to go for a walk: the new symbol of Dubai was, in principle, to become the tallest structure ever built on planet Earth, overtaking the 646-meter Warsaw radio tower, which collapsed, however, along with socialism back in 1991.

Psychoanalysts could say a lot about such a passionate desire to surpass rivals in the length of, let’s say, a vertical dominant, but in some ways the Dubai sheikhs can be understood. Their emirate was completing the process of reorienting the economy from oil and gas production to the provision of various kinds of services, and some well-known symbol of the city’s new existence as a financial, cultural, entertainment, and finally tourist center not just regional, but planetary scale, was necessary. Dubai now accounts for just 2% of the United Arab Emirates' gas production, and its oil reserves are widely expected to run out within the next 20 years. The Emirate was lucky that its government realized the size of the inevitable disaster in time and, while the means were available, took measures to prevent it.

To design the iconic building, which received the simple name “Burj Dubai” (translated from Arabic as “Dubai Tower”), the bosses of Emaar Properties turned to the American company SOM. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. What was once a relatively small Chicago bureau has now become a true multinational architectural corporation with hundreds of projects, offices around the world and thousands of employees. The firm's senior partner, Adrian Smith, was appointed chief architect for the project. He proposed for the construction of an 830-meter building at once, which is a trefoil in plan, into which several volumes of different heights are combined around a central core.

According to Smith, the artistic image of the Burj Dubai was inspired by traditional Islamic architecture, and the Y-shaped plan was supposed to resemble a hymenocallis flower, a plant found in the vicinity of Dubai.

For comparison, this is the architect's source of inspiration.

Architectural experts, in turn, immediately drew attention to the external similarity of the Burj Dubai with the Illinois project of the outstanding American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. This mile-high utopian skyscraper was conceived by Wright back in 1956, but, of course, could not be realized at that time due to the lack of construction technologies suitable for the scope of the idea.

Legends are legends, but the trefoil plan with a very simple structure allows you to most effectively deal with wind loads on the building, which pose a serious problem for buildings of this height. Their additional reduction is also facilitated by the spiral tiered structure of the skyscraper, the area of ​​the floors of which consistently decreases as the tower moves upward. In addition, the Y-shape is ideal for ensuring that the maximum number of interior spaces have panoramic views of the Persian Gulf and the city.

The construction site of Downtown Dubai is still empty, only the foundation of the Dubai Tower has been completed. The main contractor for the work was the construction division of the Korean corporation Samsung.

So, Samsung, using mainly Indians and Pakistanis, had to build an 830-meter building with 163 floors with a total area of ​​310 thousand square meters. The first 39 floors of the Burj Dubai, the largest in area, were given over to rooms and apartments of the Armani Hotel, then private apartments were designed up to and including the 108th floor, the upper, smallest levels were given over to offices. These three large groups of premises were supplemented with special technical floors, as well as public floors, where everyone has access: several observation platforms, restaurants, and a swimming pool.

The diagram below clearly shows how the floor area of ​​the Dubai Tower decreases as its number of floors increases. At the top is a typical hotel floor plan, in the center is an apartment floor plan, and at the bottom is an office floor plan. The three wings of the skyscraper are united by a clearly visible central hexagonal core, where stairs, elevators and other engineering are located.

And this is what the plan from the diagram above looked like in real life. Next to the foundation of the future skyscraper, figures of builders can be seen, from which one can roughly imagine the general scale of the building. 45 thousand cubic meters of concrete were poured into the foundation alone, 192 piles were used, each with a diameter of 1.5 and a length of 43 meters.

Structurally, the building is a monolithic frame made of reinforced concrete with continuous cladding of glass panels. In total, 330 thousand cubic meters of concrete, 55 thousand tons of reinforcement and 22 million (!) man-hours were spent on its construction. The latest achievement, ensured by the labor of several thousand builders who were usually on the construction site at the same time, as well as the low assessment of this work on the part of Arab customers, periodically caused revolutionary turmoil among the workers.

At the same time, 3 tower cranes, installed on the top of the tower, with a lifting capacity of 25 tons each, were working on the construction of the building.

The glazing of the skyscraper, as is customary for such high-rise buildings, took place in parallel with construction.

In total, it was necessary to install more than 26 thousand glass panels (the photo shows the process of installing one of them) with a total area of ​​142 thousand square meters. Day and night this important task was carried out by more than 300 specialists discharged from the PRC.

Some fragments of the building required not just glass cladding, but also filling the walls with silicate blocks, which is popular in Belarus.

As the skyscraper gained height, the area of ​​the floors was successively reduced, and ultimately the upper levels, in fact, represent only the central hexagonal core without the trefoil petals. To harmoniously complete the artistic image of the high-rise, it was necessary to install a steel spire weighing 4 thousand tons on this core. The spire contains 46 additional technical floors. Thus, the total number of floors of the building reaches 209 (plus two underground parking levels).

Construction of the Burj Dubai lasted exactly six years and ended with the grand opening ceremony on January 4, 2010. Due to the crisis that broke out in Dubai in 2009, the construction of the tallest building in the world was delayed for an extra year. The ambitious projects of the emirate's leadership almost buried it (the emirate). The Burj Dubai alone cost $1.5 billion, and if not for financial assistance from neighboring Abu Dhabi, which kindly lent a life-saving $20 billion at a critical moment, Dubai would have faced financial collapse. One of the conditions for providing support was, apparently, the rather humiliating renaming of the “Dubai Tower” to “Burj Khalifa” (“Khalifa Tower”) in honor of the ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

Thus, the main high-rise accent of the Dubai skyline, the pride of the emirate and a symbol of its bright future, was named after the Emir of Abu Dhabi. Given the long tradition of rivalry between the two Arab Emirates, the decision was probably not easy for the Dubai sheikhs.

The Burj Khalifa complex on a situational plan. The numbers indicate: 1 - main entrance, 2 - Armani Hotel entrance, 3 - entrance for skyscraper residents, 4 - observation deck, 5 - promenade, 6 - gardens, 7 - fountains, 8 - children's playground playground, 9 - recreation area, 10 - technical area, 11 - entrance for those working in the building.

The area around the skyscraper looks something like this. You can even forget for a while that there is a lifeless desert around you.

Burj Khalifa in all its glory.

The grandiose “dancing” fountains alone cost the owners $200 million.

The Burj Khalifa is served by 57 elevators and 8 escalators. Each elevator accommodates 12-14 people and moves at speeds of up to 18 meters per second. Just in case there is a firefighter (literally), there is also a staircase up to the height of the 160th floor. Those who want to walk along it will have to climb 2909 steps.

The lower 39 floors of the building are occupied by rooms and apartments of the Armani Hotel, the first hotel designed by the famous Italian fashion designer. For example, the hotel corridor on the 39th floor looks so minimalistic.

The interior of one of the rooms.

is a famous skyscraper over 800 meters high, built in Dubai in 2010. According to experts, this stalagmite-like tower is currently the tallest in the world.

Khalifa Tower is one of the most famous landmarks of the city, always popular with tourists from all over the world. This is truly a building masterpiece, demonstrating the power and wealth of the Emirates.

The cost of this skyscraper is a total of $1.5 billion. This is a truly unique building, representing a real autonomous city in a metropolis. Burj Khalifa even has its own streets and parks with evenly trimmed lawns

The project was developed under the leadership of the world-famous US architect Adrian Smith, who has extensive practical experience in creating this type of high-rise buildings.

And the general contractor of the construction was the well-known Samsung from South Korea, who also participated in the construction of a number of famous skyscrapers in the USA, China and other countries.

Interestingly, the Burj Khalifa was built from the very beginning with the intention of making it the tallest in the world. Therefore, its final height was kept secret until the end, so that someone would not find out and build an even taller building.

In addition, in preparation for the construction of the Tower, special concrete was invented that can withstand constant temperatures environment more than +50 C, and the concrete mixture was poured using ice.

During the entire construction process, public interest in this unique building was extremely high and gave rise to a lot of rumors and newspaper rumors. In addition, it is known that the builders were paid very little, which is why they periodically rebelled.

What's inside?

Today the Khalifa Tower is the most main element business part of the city. Inside it there are offices and offices, hotels and restaurants, apartments and apartments, shops and boutiques, as well as swimming pools, gyms, Jacuzzis, etc.

The skyscraper even has its own atmosphere inside. Through grates in the floor, purified, cooled and aromatized air enters the rooms. The fragrance was also created by perfumers specifically for this Tower.

The skyscraper is glazed with energy-saving glass that does not let the sun's rays in, reflecting them. This allows you to maintain the coolness inside the building, which people in this hot country so desperately need. Glasses are washed every day.

There are more than five dozen elevators in the Khalifa Tower. Moreover, people living or working here have to take elevators with transfers, the architecture of the entire building is so complex.

Next to the skyscraper on the street there is a huge pond with a beautifully illuminated musical fountain, the height of which reaches 150 m. The fountain works to Arabic national music, as well as world modern and classical hits.

It is known that it rarely rains in the Emirates; a small amount of precipitation falls only in winter. Therefore, the Burj Khalifa has a system for collecting not rainwater, but condensate that falls onto the surface of the building from the air.

This condensate is sent through the plumbing system to a special tank in the basement and is subsequently used inside the building for watering flowers and other plantings throughout the complex.

The Tower has the most floors in the world - 163. Previously, the record for the number of floors belonged to the New York Twin Towers, notorious for the fact that they were completely destroyed as a result of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2000.

Inside the skyscraper, on the 122nd floor, there is the famous Atmosphere restaurant. It operates above all the restaurants in the world. And on the 148th floor there is an observation deck, which is also the highest in the world - a height of more than 500 m.

Excursions to the Khalifa Tower

Tourists love to visit this unique skyscraper and not only for excursion purposes. Here you can stay in one of the hotels and have a great time relaxing, traveling through the floors and visiting local restaurants, saunas, places of entertainment, etc., although this pleasure is not cheap.

You can also purchase a guided tour for several people and explore all the sights of the Tower during the day. You will surely be delighted to see Dubai from a bird's eye view. The beauty of the city will simply take your breath away, watching it from the observation decks.