---
node: spot_dubai_palm_jumeirah
type: spot
slug: palm_jumeirah
destination: dest_dubai
title: "Palm Jumeirah"
lead: "Palm Jumeirah is an artificial island in the shape of a palm tree, built between 2001 and 2006 from 94 million cubic metres of dredged sand and seven million tonnes of rock. Nothing was reinforced with concrete or steel below the waterline."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_dubai_palm_jumeirah.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artificial_Archipelagos,_Dubai,_United_Arab_Emirates_ISS022-E-024940_lrg_(cropped).jpg"
image_author: "Member of the Expedition 22 crew."
image_license: "Public domain"
---

## Overview

The sand was sprayed into position by a technique called rainbowing and settled by vibrocompaction; the crescent breakwater is rock, placed by GPS to within a few centimetres. The island added 78 kilometres of coastline to Dubai. Its environmental record is the other half of the story: the dredging buried reefs and changed currents along the coast, and the fronds' enclosed water needed engineering afterwards to circulate at all.

## Highlights

The monorail runs the trunk to Atlantis and is the cheapest way to see the scale; the view from The View at the Palm observatory on floor 52 is the only way to see the shape from the island itself. The boardwalk along the eastern crescent is free, public and mostly empty. Beaches on the fronds are private; the public beach is at the trunk end.