The Hejaz Mountains, inside The Red Sea destination in western Saudi Arabia, about twenty minutes by road from Red Sea International Airport. Designed by Oppenheim Architecture with interiors by Studio Paolo Ferrari, it opened in early February 2025 with 64 keys — 54 villas and 10 suites — developed, owned and run by Red Sea Global. It is this Library’s clearest case of a house made by taking rock away rather than by putting anything on the ground.
The house
Red Sea Global, the state-owned developer of The Red Sea and AMAALA, unveiled the project on 27 September 2021 and named Oppenheim Architecture, founded by Chad Oppenheim, as its designer. Construction had started that July. The release set out the material logic before the form: materials excavated on site would go into the infrastructure, stone would face interior and exterior walls and floors, and ground stone with the existing sand would make the concrete aggregate, named as the main building material. The resort was designed for the highest level of LEED certification, with harvested rainwater used to green the wadi and local community members working as land stewards.
The build is the subject. By August 2023 the developer reported the resort more than half complete, with ten rooms fully excavated and formed in the mountainside and all 195 metres of tunnelling finished; the plan then was 48 villas and 12 hotel rooms inside the mountain. Reservations opened in December 2024 across five forms — Wadi Villas, Cliff Hanging Villas, Mountain Crevice Villas, Mountain Cave Suites and a three-bedroom Royal Villa — on a site of about 30,000 square metres. It opened in early February 2025 with 64 keys, the fifth resort at The Red Sea, and in September 2026 became the first hotel in Saudi Arabia given Three MICHELIN Keys.
What distinguishes it
The hotel was dug, not built The developer’s own progress report of August 2023 counted ten rooms fully excavated and formed in the mountainside and all 195 metres of tunnelling complete. The RIBA Journal records that access to the resort is by a long tunnel and that excavation was the principal challenge of the job. What was measured on this site was rock removed.
The mountain is also the material The September 2021 release specified that materials excavated on site would be used for infrastructure, that stone would face interior and exterior walls and floors, and that ground stone together with the existing sand would form the concrete aggregate, the main building material. The spoil from the excavation went back into the house; the RIBA Journal confirms it was reused.
The room count moved as the rock did In August 2023 the plan was 48 villas and 12 hotel rooms inside the mountain, and the same report counted ten rooms formed rather than twelve. The finished resort holds 64 keys as 54 villas and 10 suites. The register carries both figures.
The developer kept the house instead of letting it Desert Rock is run by Red Sea Global Hospitality, a subsidiary of the developer, and in December 2024 the group chief executive John Pagano called it “our third self-operated hotel in the Red Sea Global hospitality portfolio”. No international brand sits over it; the party that excavated the mountain is also the hotelier.
The first Three Keys in the kingdom On 21 September 2026 Red Sea Global announced that Desert Rock had received Three MICHELIN Keys, which the release calls the highest distinction awarded within the guide’s global hotel selection, along with the 2026 MICHELIN Architecture & Design Award. The release says it is one of only two properties in the GCC region to hold the distinction.
The rooms are inside a mountain, reached through 195 metres of tunnel, and the Mountain Cave Suites are cut into the massif itself. The resort stands inland, about twenty minutes from Red Sea International Airport and thirty from the coast, in desert where the mountains meet the sand. A guest who wants the sea at the door, or who would rather not sleep in excavated stone, is being described out of the picture.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.