The president-director of the Louvre Museum, Jean-Luc Martinez, right, gives gifts to two little girls for being the first visitors at the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi on November 11, 2017. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
Abu Dhabi: The Louvre Abu Dhabi opened its doors to the public on Saturday, drawing thousands of visitors as cosmopolitan as the United Arab Emirates itself.
Light streamed down from the vast domed ceiling, the open-air museum reminiscent of a traditional Arabic marketplace.
Inside, Emirati teenagers in flowing black robes snapped selfies next to a towering oil painting of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Hundreds of Asian, European and Arab expatriates dressed in stylish attire roamed through the vast museum alongside Emirati couples in traditional Arabic dress.
"I'm so excited to see what's in the Louvre. I don't know how to pronounce it," giggled Rachel Aquino, a Filipina nurse living in Abu Dhabi.
"LOOV," her friend Ruby Fullon, a fellow nurse from the Philippines, pronounced.