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Saudi Cultural Development Fund Debuts at Davos to Showcase Culture as Economic Engine

Saudi Cultural Development Fund Debuts at Davos to Showcase Culture as Economic Engine
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Saudi Cultural Development Fund Debuts at Davos to Showcase Culture as Economic Engine

Saudi Cultural Development Fund Debuts at Davos to Showcase Culture as Economic Engine

The Cultural Development Fund (CDF) successfully concluded its participation at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, held from January 19 to 23 in Davos, Switzerland, marking a historic and groundbreaking presence for Saudi culture at the world’s premier economic event.

Hosted at the Saudi House, the CDF engaged over 200 international experts, including leading economists and investors, through a series of dynamic activities such as a networking breakfast, panel discussion, and beneficiary talks on the NextOn platform. The CDF emphasized culture not only as a form of artistic and creative expression, but also as a vital economic driver and a strategic pillar for national development, SPA reported.

Reinforcing this vision, CDF CEO Majed Al-Hugail highlighted in a Davos panel Saudi Arabia's belief in culture as a pivotal force for economic diversification and quality of life. By 2030, he stated, the cultural sector is set to contribute $48 billion to GDP, create more than 346,000 jobs, and attract 22 million visitors.

The CDF also underscored the critical role of financing in empowering entrepreneurship and amplifying the economic potential of the cultural sector. Notable participants in the NextOn talk series included Co-Founder of AlMashtal Creative Incubator Princess Noura bint Saud bin Naif, who addressed “Culture as Economic Infrastructure: Unlocking Human Capital Through the Creative Industries.” Additionally, CEO of the Arabian Housing & Building (AHB) Company Eng. Khalid Alhenaidy contributed insights during a session titled “The Value in Cultural Assets.”

Looking ahead, the CDF organized six strategic side meetings aimed at exploring new opportunities and fostering collaborations to accelerate the development of the Saudi cultural sector and attract global investment. It also distributed 150 copies of the comprehensive investment report, Saudi Cultural Market Outlook 2025: Vision, Impact, and Opportunities, developed in partnership with the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Investment, and the Invest Saudi initiative.

Furthermore, the CDF showcased Saudi creativity by exporting 60 cultural products from Samuda, a fashion-sector beneficiary brand, highlighting the growing economic significance of the Saudi fashion market.

This milestone reflects the CDF’s commitment to serving as a center of excellence and financial enabler for the Kingdom’s cultural sector. It underscores ongoing efforts to elevate Saudi culture on the global stage, maximizing its economic and social impact in alignment with the ambitious objectives of Saudi Vision 2030.

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Culture

Italy’s Lecce… Florence of the South

The city has an ancient history that stretches back more than 2,000 years (Getty Images) 
The city has an ancient history that stretches back more than 2,000 years (Getty Images) 
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Italy’s Lecce… Florence of the South

The city has an ancient history that stretches back more than 2,000 years (Getty Images) 
The city has an ancient history that stretches back more than 2,000 years (Getty Images) 

‘The best way to experience Lecce is to walk around looking up.’

That is what a tourist is told shortly after arriving in the second-largest city in Italy’s Puglia region, often described as the “Florence of the South.”

And not because it is a place filled with skyscrapers like New York. Rather, because so much of its beauty is built into its exquisite architecture, according to London’s Metro newspaper.

The cobbled streets are steeped in history, and every Baroque-era building tells a story, much like its northern sister.

Florence attracts millions of tourists each year, many of them drawn by world-famous masterpieces.

There are frescoes by Giotto, canvases by Botticelli, and sculptures by Michelangelo — it is the cradle of the Renaissance, after all.

As for Lecce, the city sits in the Salento peninsula of Puglia, and its honey-drenched limestone is its dominant feature.

Much like Florence, you are never far from a church. Again and again, you see an unassuming facade and find an incredible duomo inside.

Nothing compares to Lecce Cathedral, built in the 12th century in the heart of the historic center, the Piazza del Duomo.

You could spend hours taking in the intricacies of the artwork: pillars romanticized with tiny cherubs, altars carved in gold and huge stone fonts.

Remembering the advice, tourists should look up at the ceiling and find a version of The Last Supper, painted by Giuseppe da Brindisi.

By night, the streets of Lecce are a gorgeous setting for walking off hearty meals, shopping and finding hidden gems like secret gardens in courtyards.

Lecce is smaller than Florence and less crowded, but is just as impressive. This city might be big on siestas, but it’s certainly not one to be slept on.

 

 

Culture

‘The Eye of Goliath’, A Novel That Recalls Jekyll and Hyde

Cover of “The Eye of Goliath” book
Cover of “The Eye of Goliath” book
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‘The Eye of Goliath’, A Novel That Recalls Jekyll and Hyde

Cover of “The Eye of Goliath” book
Cover of “The Eye of Goliath” book

By Dexter Palmer* 

“The Eye of Goliath”, the Argentine writer Diego Muzzio’s dark-humored, macabre puzzle box of a novel, is set just after World War I, in an Edinburgh sanitarium that “harbored a select group of the many mentally ill people who had come back from the war.”

The institution’s psychiatrist, Edward Pierce, conducts controversial research into hypnosis as a means of treating mental illness. His peers think his experiments are “destined to fail before too long,” while Pierce finds their “methods, based on pharmacology and electricity, to be ineffective and obsolete.”

A new patient, an engineer named David Bradley, arrives at the sanitarium after being stranded on an island with an abandoned lighthouse, which he was sent to assess by his employers.

Pierce sees a chance to prove the viability of his innovative psychiatric procedures.

Traumatized and unable to speak, Bradley is possessed by a need to swim at all times. He has documented his time on the island in a diary, which makes up the second part of the book and details his descent into madness and persistent terror. Muzzio then returns to Pierce and the treatment of his perplexing patient.

This complexly plotted novel is deeply intertextual, and Muzzio uses other writers’ themes as a hip-hop producer might use samples, crafting new tunes by borrowing fragments of familiar melodies and arranging them in new ways.

Allusions abound to Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Dante’s “Inferno,” the first Book of Samuel, the work of the writer and naturalist William Henry Hudson and Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

The most significant influence, however, is Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic novella “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.”

A few mentions function as blinking neon signposts (Pierce has a copy of the book in his bedroom; the lighthouse engineer David Alan Stevenson, Robert’s real-life cousin, makes an appearance), but subtler engagements with the novella also come into view.

Pierce’s neuralgia, a condition of crippling headaches caused by shrapnel lodged in his head, is kept in check by increasingly frequent doses of morphine.

His habit echoes Dr Jekyll’s dependence on his secret elixir, which he first imbibes to deliver his evil alter ego, Hyde, to the world (and then takes to restrain Hyde from appearing on his own).

An act carried out on a pair of corpses is viewed from two perspectives, one that regards it as a desecration and the other as a performance of remorse; where one person might see a Hyde, another might see a Jekyll. Twins and duplicates appear throughout, including one clever moment when the book itself becomes doubled. In its elegant, sometimes playfully quaint prose (ably translated from the Spanish by Rahul Bery) and in its structure, particularly the documents that make up Bradley’s section, the novel gestures toward the Gothic without wholly turning into pastiche.

Behind Pierce’s and Bradley’s plotlines are memories of the recently ended war, which both men would prefer to forget.

Flashbacks to the phantasmagoria of trench warfare, a “fabulous catalyst for insanity,” are the novel’s most unsettling passages.

Pierce views the personification of war as a grotesque distortion of Carroll’s Alice, a girl with “glimmering eyes who went about with a jingling bunch of keys, opening all the chambers of the mind where legions of babbling demons had been shut away.”

The trenches are where every man is forced by circumstance to bring forth a Hyde, not for the pleasure that Stevenson’s Hyde takes in violence, but for mere survival. In this compelling novel, the fates of both Pierce and Bradley suggest that no matter how justified one may be for letting Hyde run riot the first time, it is extremely difficult to contain him again.

 

*The New York Times

Culture

On World Architecture Day, Madinah Reflects Its Identity Through Its Urban Landscape

Madinah stands out for its architectural character, which draws on the city’s cultural identity and architectural heritage. (SPA)
Madinah stands out for its architectural character, which draws on the city’s cultural identity and architectural heritage. (SPA)
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On World Architecture Day, Madinah Reflects Its Identity Through Its Urban Landscape

Madinah stands out for its architectural character, which draws on the city’s cultural identity and architectural heritage. (SPA)
Madinah stands out for its architectural character, which draws on the city’s cultural identity and architectural heritage. (SPA)

The first Monday of October marks World Architecture Day, an occasion that highlights the role of architecture in shaping cities and enhancing the quality of the urban environment. Madinah stands out for its architectural character, which draws on the city’s cultural identity and architectural heritage while preserving the authenticity and distinctiveness of the place, the Saudi Press Agency reported Tuesday.

Madinah’s architectural style embodies an approach that derives its identity from the city’s architectural features and cultural elements, incorporating them into contemporary designs. This strengthens the connection between the urban landscape and the city’s history and local environment, giving its projects a distinctive character.

Local architecture showcases details historically associated with the city, such as rawasheen (traditional projecting wooden windows), courtyards, basalt stone, and other heritage-inspired elements. Reinterpreting these features through contemporary methods helps strike a balance between authenticity and the demands of modern life, creating urban environments that respond to human needs while ensuring comfort and privacy.

Architectural features and design identities rooted in the local environment enhance the distinctiveness of the urban landscape and elevate design quality, aligning with future aspirations while simultaneously preserving the memory and identity of the place. The focus on Madinah’s architectural identity aligns with the objectives of Saudi Architecture, which aim to enhance urban identity, improve the urban landscape, and develop sustainable, human-centric urban environments in harmony with the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030.