Prior to the modern urbanization of Kuwait, the old city was encircled by a mudbrick wall for protection with five gates from which you could enter the city. The English travel writer Freya Start visited Kuwait in the 1930s. She wrote in her work Baghdad Sketches, “the police who sit in the gatehouses… lounge on their seat or square in a windowless den brewing coffee and keep their eye on who goes in or out. As I stroll by and say ‘Peace be upon you,’ they invite me to share whatever their meal may be.” In 1939, the American doctor Dr. Lewis R. Scudder came to Kuwait. In the 1969 National Geographic article Aladdin’s Lamp of the Middle East, he reminisced, “the gates were locked at night, and you had to get a watchman up to let you through. Most houses were one story high, made of mud or coral rock with mud interiors.” The wall was demolished in 1957 as part of the First Master Plan, which dramatically changed Kuwait’s urban landscape. Robert Fabbri writes in his chapter “Fragmentarium” in the book Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf, “Soor (‘wall’ in Arabic) is the street that replaced the empty corridor left by the demolition of the old city wall in the 1950s. Fringed by a vegetated buffer zone, the Green Belt, Soor Street delineates the inner urban core from the suburbs.” The gates were kept for posterity. Above you can see an old postcard of Al Jahra Gate, which is located on a roundabout near the Sheraton Hotel. The postcard likely dates to the 1960s or 70s, and many of the buildings along Fahad al Salem have been demolished and replaced with skyscrapers.

According to Modern Architecture Kuwait by Roberto Fabbri and Sara Saragoça, the Thunayan Al-Ghanim building was completed in 1959. It was the first multi-story building in Kuwait and was one of the first to have an elevator. According to Iridescent Kuwait by Laura Hindelang, “in March 1969, Kuwait’s, and in the fact the Gulf’s, first art gallery opened in the iconic Thunayan Al Ghanim building on the roundabout leading to Fahad al-Salem Street with a show of works by Munira al-Kazi (Kuwait) and Issam al-Said (Iraq). The Sultan Gallery… would continue to show ‘modern young Arab artists’ and sometimes also Western artists, such as Andy Warhol in 1977, to create networks of artistic exchange across the Arab world and beyond.” I took this photo in January of 2026, when the building was under renovation.

According to the chapter “Framentarium” by Robert Fabbri in the book Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf, Kuwait’s First Master Plan, commissioned in the 1950s, designated Fahad Al Salem and Abdullah al Salem to become the first modern streets in Kuwait City. Fabbri writes that, “they pointed to Safat Square, the main public space, adjacent to the first municipal park… on Fahad Al Salem, every merchant family in Kuwait competed to acquire spots to flaunt their businesses, and consequently, land speculation… fueled the credible myth as (the street) as the most expensive mile on the planet. For a decade, (Fahad Al Salem) became Kuwait’s badge of modernity, depicted in all the postcards, official publications, and international magazines illustrating Kuwait’s progress.” Above you can see an old postcard of Fahad Al Salem street, with the post office on the left and the Anwar Al Sabah complex on the right. For many years, the deteriorating buildings of the Anwar Al Sabah Complex stood in stark contrast to the adjacent luxury Salhiya mall, but beginning in 2023, the structure was torn down. Today, the (modified?) post office remains, but is abandoned and has a wall around it.

Opened sometime in the 1960s, the Carlton was once located along Fahad Al Salem Street across from the Anwar Al Sabah Complex. It was demolished sometime between 2004 and 2008. Above you can see an old postcard of the hotel and its location today, which remains a parking lot. Discussed above, the Anwar Al Sabah Complex was demolished more recently, between 2023-24. You can read more about historic hotels in Kuwait here.

Al Mullah Saleh is a historic mosque in Kuwait located along Fahad Al Salem street. At some point (likely in the 1980s?), it was renovated and the minaret was altered to a much more modern style.

According to Kuwait City Parks (1985) by Subhi Abdullah Al-Mutawa, “the [municipality park] is located in the center section of the business and commercial district of Kuwait City. Comprising an area of 35,000 square meters, Municipality was formerly a public cemetery until it  was designated a park in 1961 because of the city’s expansion. The  task of designing the public park in busy downtown Kuwait began in 1962 when most of the graves were removed. A 2.13 meters high wall  was established as a park fence to protect the park from vandalism and misuse. Outside of the fence the park is given a pleasant appearance by rows of coconut type palm trees (W ashingtonia) which surrounded it. The park is bordered by three major roads. On the east lies Fahad  Al-Salem Street, which consists of most of the commercial  businesses. Also on the park’s east side there is a taxi station which  operates 24 hours a day. Saif Aldawla Street borders the south; the  west side is marked by Ali Alsalim Street and is only two blocks from  the sea. The north section is bordered by the old Kuwait commercial  district and the money exchange market.” Above you can see an old postcard of the park.

According to “rethinking.kuwait”, Al-Shamlan Mosque in Kuwait City was built in 1922 and then renovated in 1959. They write that it “now stands amidst a roundabout due to the demolition of the original fabric once surrounding it.”

According to Kuwait Transformed by Farah Al-Nakib, “in pre-oil Kuwait Town, the large, open-air market just outside of the city limits was known as al-Safat. In this large, undeveloped clearing, the Bedouin tribes of the surrounding hinterland set up temporary stalls where they traded their desert produce, such as milk, butter, ghee, horses, and sheep with the townspeople in exchange for dates, clothing, firearms, salt and manufactured items.” Over time, the urban suq (Mubarakiya) extended into al-Safat. The nature of the space began to change, as people built cafés and other businesses. According to Mubarak Al-Sabah: The Foundations of Kuwait by Souad Al-Sabah, in 1915 a man named Abdullah Al-Zaydi placed the gramophone to be used in Kuwait in a café he owned in Al-Safat Square. In Iridescent Kuwait, Laura Hindelang writes that, “Safat Square lastingly shaped the urban morphology of Kuwait Town. From the 1930s onward, the Department of Finance, the police station, the British Bank of the Middle East, the Security Department, coffee ships and the baladiyya, the municipality founded in 1930, began framing the always-busy square.” Al-Safat became the main town square used for public festivities; in the 1940s a traveling cinema came to Kuwait. As many as 10,000 people attended the first showing, sitting on the ground in the middle of the square to watch the film.

This historic building was built around the turn of the century for Sheikh Khaz’al, who was a friend of Sheikh Mubarak. Across the street are the ruins of the Al Ghanim house. In his work Glimpses of Kuwait Tareq Rajab writes that, “[the] Diwaniyat al-Shaikh Khaza’al is situated to the east of Beit al-Ghanim or the Harem of the palace complex. A stretch of land originally separated them and this later became a main street leading from Dasman Palace round-about to the sea front next to the British Embassy. The Diwaniyah… differs from any architectural style known in Kuwait and was built to look like a fort with four round towers and open colonnades (verandas) on all sides.” When Freya Stark visited Kuwait in 1937, she visited the widow of the sheikh and wrote, “[the palace] crumbles away slowly in the sun, while a young Persian widow lives inside it… like a princess in a fairy tale, still young but so poor that she will scarce marry again. Here and there in the empty rooms some trace can still be seen of former bustle, an old barouche in the entrance, glass ornaments and painful coloured fancies, mattresses piled high for guests, and brass-bound coffers. The young widow sits dressed in black with high-heeled shoes on a stiff chair, and feeds her guests with sherbert, pistachios, and melon seeds, her pretty little whimsical face smiling with a natural cheerfulness.” Beginning in 1957, the diwan served as the Kuwait National Museum. In 1960, Kuwait launched an architectural competition for the design of a new National Museum. French architect Michel Ecochard won and his design was completed in 1983. The historic palace complex began to deteriorate and was further damaged during the invasion. In 2022, a renovation project began of Beit Alghanim.