South of Sikkat al Khail Road stretches the downmarket commercial area popularly known as the Covered Souk – although it’s not really a proper souk, and neither is it covered. There are hundreds of tiny shops here, arranged around dozens of narrow alleyways and selling a mundane selection of household items, cheap clothes and textiles – you probably won’t find...

Fronting the Corniche on the northern edge of Deira, Dubai’s food souk occupies a large and functional warehouse-style building. Different areas are devoted to fish, meat, and fruit and veg. The first two are particularly lively early in the day, with great piles of prawns, baby sharks and gory hunks of meat set out on the display – not for...

Dubai’s obsession with glitz and dazzle is nothing new, as a visit to the city’s famous Gold Souk will prove. At the heart of the old district of Deira, this is easily Dubai’s most famous traditional bazaar, with a hundred-odd shops lined up shoulder to shoulder, their windows stuffed with a vast array of gold jewellery. There’s a wide range...

Just down the road from the Gold Souk, the Spice Souk is an altogether more sedate affair, with a few narrow lanes lined with traditional spice shops, most of them still run by the Iranian traders who have traditionally cornered this section of the city’s trade. Most of the shops have big sacks or trays of fragrant offerings ranged outside,...

Occupying a prime Creekside location bang in the middle of Bur Dubai, the old Textile Souk is the prettiest in the city, with a long, carefully restored arcade of old coral-walled buildings topped by an arching wooden roof, offering welcome shade in the heat of the day. This was once the old city’s principal souk and commercial heart, though its...