The Saudi Kings stand out for their extraordinary prosperity among the world’s richest rulers! The former King of Saudi Arabia, Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (1920/21/23 – August 1, 2005), was one such ruler. While Fortune Magazine reported his wealth in 1988 at USD 18 billion (making him the second-richest person in the world at that time), Forbes estimated King Fahd’s wealth to be USD 25 billion in 2002!

King Fahd, the eighth son of founder of modern Saudi Arabia King Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, also served as the Prime Minister of his country from June 13, 1982 until his death in 2005. Prior to his ascension, he was the Crown Prince of the Kingdom from 1975 to 1982.

Members of the Saudi Royal Family own numerous palaces around the world. Several of those palaces are not in good condition, due to lack of care. One of them is King Fahd’s favourite marble palace in Marbella on Spain’s Costa del Sol. He built the GBP 300 million Mar-Mar Palace inside the Nahda Complex as a holiday home in the 1980s. Mar-Mar is the Sanskrit and Persian term for marble, while it is called Rukham in Arabic. As the marble palace looks exactly like the White House (the official residence of the US President), it is known as King Fahd’s very own White House!

Once, the Mar-Mar Palace, made of precious marbles, housed everything from hospitals to helipads! King Fahd even built a mosque and a sports centre inside the palace complex built over an area of over 200 acres! The Saudi King used to enjoy vacations in that palace with his 13 wives and guests.

However, the marble palace has changed a lot in the last couple of decades (since the demise of King Fahd in 2005). Property worth millions has been looted, while the palace has become dilapidated, due to neglect. YouTube explorer Jake Parr managed to sneak into the abandoned palace in 2018 and shared videos of his adventures inside it. He described the palace, once lavishly decorated, as haunted! In the video recorded by Jake, the walls of the palace are seen covered with graffiti. However, the golden door handles and the marble staircases still carry the past heritage!

The gardens are now overgrown with weeds due to lack of maintenance, while the water in the swimming pool has dried up. One can find a thick layer of dust on the floor and piles of dirt in various rooms. The locals could not have imagined that the condition of the Mar-Mar Palace would be like this one day! They have claimed that King Fahd had brought prosperity to the local economy! Once, the Saudi King had reportedly given EUR 234,000 to his palace staff during his visit to Marbella! The Spanish city has named a street after King Fahd and a garden dedicated to him.

Isabel García Marcos, the former Deputy Mayor of Marbella, told The Guardian many years ago that King Fahd had made only four visits to Marbella after his palace was built! Meanwhile, Christopher Clover, the American owner of the Panorama Estate Agency in Marbella, stressed that some “Saudi princes were so in love with the place that they visited every year“. He believes that the Saudi Royal Family would never sell this property. “Royal families do not sell their properties. They do not need the money,” stated Clover.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das