The world’s tallest hotel with world’s largest clock Built in Holy Mecca..

THE ABRAJ AL BAIT COMPLEX IN SAUDI ARABIA, WITH IT'S ICONIC GIANT CLOCK, HAS EXPLODED ONTO THE WORLD'S ARCHITECTURAL LANDSCAPE, BLOWING A NUMBER OF RECORDS SKY HIGH.

Dubai’s Burj Khalifa might be the world’s tallest building, but the new, multi-billion-dollar, sky’s-the-limit Abraj Al Bait complex in Mecca, Saudi Arabia has a number of extreme world records of its own.

Try some of these for size: it boasts the world’s tallest hotel, on top of which is the world’s tallest four-sided clock tower and the world’s largest clock. When combined with the six other towers in the complex, it has the largest floor area of any building in the world at 1.5m m2, and can accommodate 65,000 people at any one time. It is building of Brobdingnagian proportions.

The centre piece of the complex is the world’s second tallest building, the 601-metre (1,972 feet) high Mecca Royal Clock Tower that looms over the Masjid al-Haram mosque and the Kaaba – the cuboid-shaped building that is the most sacred site in Islam.

It may not be to everyone’s taste, but there’s no doubting the clock tower makes an impression

The Mecca Royal Clock is four-sided, and each dial measures a staggering 43 metres across. To put that into perspective, London’s Big Ben (or St Stephen’s Tower, if we’re being pedantic) has dials of just seven metres in diameter.

Sticking with the same comparison, Big Ben makes do with 28 light bulbs per dial, while the Royal Mecca Clock’s dials are each packed with over two million LEDs. Added to that, it has a further 21,000 lamps that beam white and green lights to a distance of 30km, five times a day, calling people to prayer.

Each clock face is 43 metres in diameter and is illuminated by two million LED lights

The clock ticked its first tock in August last year, in time for Ramadan. The clockwork itself was engineered by Swiss firm Straintec, weighs 21 tonnes and runs on Arabia Standard time, three hours ahead of GMT.

Built by the Saudi Binladin Group, the complex cost an estimated $15 billion (roughly the same cost as hosting the London Olympics) and is part of a plan to triple the number of pilgrims that Mecca can handle during the annual Hajj pilgrimage to 35 million .

Collection by: M.Ajmal Khan.