Mecca Royal Clock Tower vs Kingdom Centre

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The Abraj Al-Bait (Arabic: ????? ??????, romanized: ?Abr?? al-Bayt 'Towers of the House') is a government-owned complex of seven skyscraper hotels in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. These towers are a part of the King Abdulaziz Endowment Project which aims to update the city in catering to its pilgrims. The central hotel tower, the Makkah Royal Clock Tower, has the world's largest clock face and is the third-tallest building and fifth-tallest freestanding structure in the world. The clock tower comprises the Clock Tower Museum which occupies the top four floors of the tower.The building complex is metres away from the world's largest mosque and Islam's most sacred site, the Great Mosque of Mecca.

The developer and builder of this complex is that the Saudi Binladin Group, the Kingdom's largest construction firm. It's the world's second most expensive building with the whole cost of construction totalling US$15 billion. The complex was built after the demolition of the Ajyad Fortress, the 18th-century Ottoman citadel on top of a hill overlooking the Grand Mosque. The destruction of the historically important site in 2002 from the Saudi authorities sparked international outcry and a powerful response from Turkey.

Source: Wikipedia

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Kingdom Centre (Arabic: ???? ????????) is a 99-story, 302.3 m (992 ft) skyscraper in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. When completed in 2002, it overtook the 267-meter Faisaliyah Tower as the tallest tower in Saudi Arabia. It has since been surpassed and has become the fifth-tallest skyscraper in the nation, whose tallest two buildings are the Abraj Al Bait Towers and the Capital Market Authority Tower. It is the world's third-tallest building with a hole following the Shanghai World Financial Center and the 85 Sky Tower in Taiwan. The mixed-use tower was created by Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and designed by the group of Ellerbe Becket and Omrania, who were selected through an international design competition. It is situated on a 100,000--square-metre website and houses the 57,000-square-meter Al-Mamlaka shopping mall, offices, the Four Seasons Hotel Riyadh, and luxury apartments. There is a 65m skybridge atop the skyscraper.The upper third of the tower features an inverted parabolic arch topped by a public sky bridge. The sky bridge is a 300-ton steel construction, taking the kind of an enclosed corridor with windows on either side. After paying the entrance fees, visitors take two elevators to reach that level.

Source: Wikipedia