A new hotel is officially the world’s tallest
With Burj Khalifa holding the status of the world’s tallest building since 2010, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates has come to be associated above all with its mega-tall skyscrapers.
The city’s 1,394-foot Ciel Dubai Marina is the second-tallest residential building after Central Park Tower in New York, while Princess Tower, also in Dubai’s Marina, is now the third (at the time it was built in 2012, it was the world’s tallest for residential).
As they can be calculated by both the location of the hotel inside the building and the height of the entire structure containing other floors with residential or office spaces, the title of the world’s tallest hotel is not as straightforward to establish. The hotel located at the highest point in the world is the Rosewood Guangzhou at 1,738 feet above ground in the Chinese city’s 111-story Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre.
Officially opening up to guests last month after a period of construction between 2018 and 2024, The Ciel Dubai Marina is now the world’s tallest standalone hotel at 1,237 feet.
Developed by The First Group and designed by local architect Yahya Jan, the 1,004-room hotel rises 82 floors above the Marsa Dubai marina district into an “eye of the needle” opening meant to both give the building a futuristic design and navigate wind loads at that altitude.
By Veronika Bondarenko