Abraj Al Bait (Makkah Royal Clock Tower)

From the following picture we can see how close the Makkah Clock Tower is from the Kabaa.

Height

The Central Tower (Makkah Clock Tower) of the complex stands 601 meters (1972 feet) tall and has 120 floors, as of 2023 it's the 4th tallest building among all the completed and topped out buildings around the world, only after Burj Khalifa, Merdeka 118, and Shanghai Tower, see World's tallest buildings in 2023 for details. The height comparison is shown in the video below.

The Clock Tower situated in the middle of the complex is 2 meters taller than Shenzhen's Ping An Finance Center, a tower looks very high. Even the crescent alone which is attached at the peak of the tower contributes 23 meters to the height of the tower, approximately equals to the height of a 7-story building.

The height of each of four clocks is 46 meters, the middle point of each clock face is 430 meters high from the street level.
The highest habitable floor is at 450 meters, and the highest accessible floor for visitors is at 393 meters.
The significant height of the tower makes it visible at some remote places as far as 17 kilometers away.
The most outstanding feature is not its height but also bulk. Abraj Al Bait has the largest floor area among the skyscraper buildings in the world, it is composed of 7 individual towers of different heights, aside from the central clock tower, all the other shorter towers are over 230 meters, and the 2 beside the Middle Tower stand 280 meters. With all these giant buildings connected together, Abraj Al Bait appears very imposing and magnificent, far more majestic than Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang.

Owner

The owner of the Abraj Al Bait complex is the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, which is operated by Government of Saudi Arabia.

Uses

Makkah Royal Clock Hotel Tower and the whole complex are not simply used as hotels, it also contains shopping mall, Islamic museum, residences and a considerable amount of area of religious spaces like prayer rooms, by which its location makes sense.
The buildings mainly used as hotels, which contain 858 suits, operated by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, a Canadian operator of 5-star luxury hotels, it operates more than 60 landmark luxury hotels in the world, such as Fairmont San Francisco and Shanghai Peace Hotel, which are all located in the cities' central plots.

Among all 6 high-rise buildings of Abraj Al Bait, 4 of them are residential towers, containing a total of 864 residential units.
The first 5 floors at the bottom of the Makkah Clock Tower are used as a shopping Mall, the layout and style of the mall is similar with the traditional shopping markets in Arabia world.

The hotel also features a conference center, including a series of meeting rooms, capable of holding about 1500 people. The hotel has two large prayer rooms for men and women relatively. There is a prayer room that can accommodate more than ten thousand people.
The parking garage of the building occupies 4 floors, capable of holding more than 1000 vehicles.
Aside from the park, there are 2 helipads on the roofs of Maqam and Qibla towers respectively, which are two podium buildings right beside the Central Clock Tower.
The initial purpose of building the Clock Tower is to use it as a well-marked clock for pilgrims to proofread time. The clock can broadcast the prayer to the believers through loudspeakers, the sound of messages can spread to seven kilometers away.
Inside the Central Clock Tower, there's a museum which features a collection of works of Islamic Art.

From the picture above we can see that Abraj Al Bait consists of seven separated high-rise buildings, roughly divided into front row and back row.
Look at the front row, there are two symmetrical buildings, the one on the left is called Safa Tower, the right one is called Marwah Tower,

The back row: there are 5 buildings, from the left to the right are Maqam Tower, Hajar Tower, Makkah Royal Clock Hotel Tower(Clock Tower), Zamzam Tower, Qibla Tower.
Below are some basic data of all these 7 buildings.

Design and Development

As the population of Muslim around the world keeps growing, and with the improvement of traffic, more and more Muslim are making pilgrimage to Mecca.
In response to more than ten million of annual tourists that is still growing, the government of Saudi Arabia decided to make a renovation to Mecca city, building a large number of hotels to provide accommodation for pilgrims. Abraj Al Bait was developed as a component of the King Abdulaziz Endowment Project, the purpose is to increase the subordinate scope of the area of the Grand Mosque, as Abdullah the former King of Saudi Arabia had always been trying to change and improve the cityscape of Mecca.

Abraj Al Bait is designed by Dar Al-Handasah, an architecture firm from Lebanon, the building complex is designed with typical Islamic style. But to a large extend the appearance of the tower is influenced by renowned Big Ben Tower in London, but much more huge and mixed with Islamic elements.

The base of the whole complex covers an area of 34,794 square meters, the floor area of the building reaches up to 1.57 million square meters, could accommodate about 100 thousand people, by contrast Willis Tower in Chicago could only accommodate 20 thousand people. The clocks installed upon the upper portion of the middle tower are the largest clocks in the world, with the diameter of 46 meters.
The minute hand of the clock is as long as 22 meters. The center of the clock is 430 meters high from the ground, thus it is also the highest clock in the world on a building.

The construction of the project started in 2002, the complex was developed and contracted by Saudi Bin Laden Group, which is the largest construction group in Saudi Arabia, they are also in charge of the construction of Jeddah Tower, which aimed to become the next tallest building in the world.