The GCC Journal

Aseer: Saudi Arabia’s Hidden Highlands

Painted villages, flower-crowned tribesmen, and juniper forests at 3,000 meters: the Saudi Arabia most people don’t know exists

When most people picture Saudi Arabia, they see desert: vast, flat, and relentlessly hot. The Aseer region upends that image entirely. Located in the southwest of the Kingdom, partly bordering Yemen and partly facing the Red Sea, Aseer is home to Saudi Arabia’s highest peak (Jabal Soudah, at 3,015 meters), its greenest landscapes, its coolest temperatures, and some of its most distinctive cultural traditions. It is, by almost every measure, the Saudi Arabia you don’t expect.

The regional capital, Abha, is known as the “Bride of the Mountain.” Its jacaranda-lined streets bloom violet in May. Cloud forests wrap the surrounding peaks. And in the terraced villages that cling to the mountainsides, centuries-old stone towers are painted inside with vivid geometric patterns by local women, a practice that UNESCO has recognized as one of humanity’s Intangible Cultural Heritage traditions.

Rijal Almaa

The painted village in the clouds

About 45 minutes southwest of Abha, the ancient village of Rijal Almaa emerges from the mountain mist like a scene from a different era. Its roughly 60 multi-story buildings, some reaching eight floors, are constructed from stone, clay, and wood, with white quartz patterns on their facades and colorful wooden window frames that have earned them the nickname “gingerbread houses.” The village is over 900 years old and was once a vital trading post on the route between Yemen and Makkah, handling commerce in honey, coffee, perfumes, and spices.

The Al Elwan Fort, a 400-year-old fortress in the center of the village, now serves as the primary heritage museum, housing more than 2,000 artifacts: traditional garments, jewelry, manuscripts, tools, and weapons. The UN World Tourism Organisation has named Rijal Almaa one of the best tourist villages in the world, and it has been put forward for UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

Al-Qatt Al-Asiri

The women’s art that paints homes from within

Perhaps the most distinctive cultural tradition of the Aseer region is Al-Qatt Al-Asiri, a form of interior wall decoration created and passed down exclusively by women. The practice involves painting bold, symmetrical geometric patterns, including triangles, rhombi, zigzags, and floral motifs, over white gypsum foundations using vivid natural colors: greens, yellows, reds, and whites drawn from the surrounding landscape. The word “Al-Qatt” refers to the horizontal divisions that structure the wall patterns.

The knowledge is inherited, passed from mother to daughter through observation and practice, often from childhood. One of the most celebrated practitioners was Fatima Abu Qahas, who began learning the craft at age eight and continued painting for 70 years until her death in 2010. Her work can still be seen in the Rijal Almaa Museum. In 2017, UNESCO inscribed Al-Qatt Al-Asiri on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognizing both its artistic significance and its role as a female-led tradition in a region where the built environment is otherwise male-dominated.

The Flower Men

A two-thousand-year-old tradition of floral garlands and mountain music

Among the most visually striking traditions of the Aseer region are the “Flower Men,” tribesmen of the Qahtani tribes who wear elaborate garlands made of fresh herbs, marigolds, wild basil, and other mountain flowers in their hair. The tradition is believed to date back more than two thousand years and is especially associated with the villages around Rijal Almaa. The Flower Men are also known for playing the ney (a hollow cane flute, sometimes decorated with Al-Qatt patterns) and for traditional dances performed at festivals and celebrations throughout the summer months. In an era when so much Gulf heritage is being carefully curated for tourism, the Flower Men remain a genuinely organic tradition, rooted in everyday mountain life.

Abha and Beyond

Mountain coffee, honey farms, and a purple-blooming Art Street

Abha, the regional capital, sits at roughly 2,200 meters and offers a surprisingly cosmopolitan mountain-town atmosphere. Art Street, a short drive from the center off King Khalid Road, is lined with cafes and decorated with colorful murals, framed by rows of jacaranda trees that erupt into violet blooms each May. The Al Dhabbab Walkway, perched on a mountainside, features the glass-bottomed Joy Venue cafe where visitors can take in panoramic views with an artisan coffee in hand (and the occasional baboon tight-roping along the railings).

Beyond Abha, the region offers the Aseer National Park (home to Jabal Soudah and accessible by hiking trail or cable car), the Bees Tower Honey Refinery (a charming honey farm and education center near Rijal Almaa), and the Fatimah Museum, dedicated to preserving Al-Qatt Al-Asiri art and the cultural contributions of Aseeri women. The local cuisine is equally distinctive: try areeka, a traditional dish made from hot griddled dough, local dates, and generous helpings of mountain honey.

Soudah Peaks and the Future

A $7.7 billion tourism project designed around the region’s heritage

Aseer’s tourism story is entering a new chapter. In September 2023, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched the Soudah Peaks master plan, a $7.7 billion project to develop the area around Jabal Soudah into a year-round luxury mountain tourism destination. Spanning 627 sq km across six development zones (including Rijal Almaa), the project will deliver 2,700 hotel keys, 1,336 residential units, and 80,000 sqm of commercial space by 2033. Critically, less than 1% of the total land area will be built upon, reflecting a commitment to preserving the natural and cultural landscape that makes Aseer so distinctive.

The challenge for the project will be to balance the arrival of international luxury hospitality with the preservation of the traditions that make Aseer worth visiting in the first place: the painted walls, the flower garlands, the honey farms, and the quiet, cloud-wrapped mountain villages where the pace of life has barely changed in centuries.

The Bigger Picture

The Kingdom’s other story

Aseer matters because it complicates the easy narratives about Saudi Arabia. This is not a story of oil wealth, supertall towers, or futuristic giga-projects. It is a story of mountain communities, female-led art traditions, terraced agriculture, and a landscape so green and temperate that first-time visitors often wonder whether they are still in the same country. For travelers and cultural enthusiasts looking beyond the Kingdom’s well-publicized urban transformation, Aseer offers something rarer: a region where tradition is not being excavated or reconstructed but simply continues, as it has for centuries, in the patterns on the walls and the flowers in the hair.