Among the wealthy rulers of the world, the kings of Saudi Arabia stand out for their extraordinary affluence, owning numerous palaces across the globe, some of which fade into obscurity over time. King Fahd, who was the ruler and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia from 1982 until his death in 2005, was one such royal.
Known to be one of the richest people in the world at the time, worth nearly $25 billion in 2002, he once fashioned a multi-million-dollar holiday home in Marbella, Spain; a place the founder of modern Saudi Arabia fondly dubbed “a land blessed by Allah”. The billionaire frequented the Mar-Mar Palace, inside his Nahda complex built in the 1980s.
What was a holiday to him turned out to be a carnival for Marbella. His palace, replete with marble and gold, was a replica of the White House. This opulent summer playground was a sprawling 200-acre estate boasting several luxury villas, swimming pools, a heliport, a private clinic, and a mosque, among other amenities.
Today, nearly 20 years on, the palace is not the picture of magnificence, nor are the million-dollar memories of the family and the town. It is a structure of indigence that doesn’t look remotely related to one of the richest families worldwide, with an estimated net worth of over $1.4 trillion.
Per Daily Star, Jake Parr, an urban explorer, found this now-abandoned summer home of the late Saudi King Fahd, dilapidated and left to rot. It is not even a shadow of its former self. Though there were “dogs” and “king’s guards” present at the palace as observed by Parr, it does bring to mind why the family hasn’t maintained the palace that was once their annual summer retreat.
A destination where the king beckoned in all his kingly glory with a fleet of jumbo jets, no less than 3,000 family members (he had 13 wives), and a staff of 500. The friends were accommodated in 300 hotel rooms while a fleet of 100 dazzling Mercedes cars arrived for transport from Germany.
The home that was once surrounded by lush interiors, regal finery, art, and bustling with activity was found looking completely knackered, with paint peeling and thrown into irrevocable depths of despair.
The majestic rooms that would’ve once housed his most prized possessions were now found drowning in graffiti and debris, with shattered glass dotting the floors. Manicured lawns are replaced with overgrown weeds, and the swimming pool is a home for repulsive black sludge.
A fan of extravagant water features, King Faud installed a very grand example under a grand staircase; he even had one on his $150 million Boeing 747 jet. Some bits of the intricate work and features still remain as a morbid reminder of the happy summer days in Marbella.
King Faud’s hippodrome-of-a-holiday breathed merriment and millions into Marbella-
Despite only four visits by the Saudi king, Marbella, a town of almost 125,000 people at the time, couldn’t bear his loss. That’s natural when one annual visit by the King and his humongous entourage pumped more than $90 million (in 2005) into Marbella’s economy. Per Andalucia.com, the royal once left a tip of 235,000 Euros.
They zipped in on their private jets and 482 ft, $100 million Prince Abdulaziz superyacht before heading to the Nahda complex, churning the city on southern Spain’s Costa del Sol into a financial frenzy. On King Fahd’s passing, Marbella held three days of mourning and even had a public garden and a street named after him. Fahd’s half-brother and heir, King Abdullah, did not follow his brother’s lifestyle and ways, which is perhaps why the palace, if it can still be called that, is now rotting the way it is.
Who was King Fahd of Saudi Arabia?
From a primitive backwater, Fahd turned his kingdom into a beacon of prosperity. He brought a rain of infrastructural development, social and cultural advances, educational policy, and oil affairs. A champion of modernization, the 1920-born monarch established a corps of Western-trained technicians to oversee the country’s industrial diversification. Known to be worth $25 billion, he was hedonistic, as a king with a bottomless pit of wealth would be. From gambling to leaving a trail of thousand-dollar tips. Per The Guardian, he owned a dozen palaces in Saudi Arabia and half a dozen in Europe, a Red Sea floating pleasure dome, a $100 million yacht, a $150 million Boeing 747, and a catastrophe-proof royal bunker.
