Burj Khalifa Facts and Information

Burj Khalifa is a megatall skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the building is best known for being the current world's tallest skyscraper.

The skyscraper is the most popular tourist attraction in Dubai, it has several observation decks near the top, visitors can get on and enjoy the view of the city from the sky. (Details: Tourist information of Burj Khalifa).

Name:
Burj Khalifa, literally means Khalifa Tower. Formerly known as Burj Dubai or Dubai Tower, which was changed to Burj Khalifa when the tower officially opened on January 4th 2010. Khalifa is derived from the name of Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Maktoum, who is the president of Abu Dhabi as well as United Arab Emirates, Burj Khalifa and other construction projects in Dubai were once on the verge of halting due to the attack of Financial Crisis, it was the neighbor Abu Dhabi provided funds to Dubai in the hard time, this is the main reason for Dubai to rename the tower Burj Khalifa, additionally the word Khalifa has a important significance in Islam, it means Islamic world's supreme leader.

Location:
The address of Burj Khalifa is 1 Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Boulevard, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the tower is located in Downtown Dubai, an area along Sheikh Zayed Road, it's one of several districts in the city filled with lots of high-rises buildings, another district with significant amount of skyscrapers is Dubai Marina, the two districts are approximately 11 miles apart.

In comparison with Dubai Marina which is located right by the sea, Burj Khalifa is 2.1 miles away from the sea, so the natural view surrounding the tower is not as tempting as Dubai Marina, but there are many man-made lakes and rivers around the tower, these lakes and rivers have made up for the deficiency to a certain extent.

Height:
The architectural height of Burj Khalifa is 828 meters or 2717 feet, this is measured to the top of the spire, as its spire is considered an architectural element of the tower.
Before 2010, Burj Khalifa's height has long been kept as a secret in order to prevent it from being surpassed by potential competitors. Finally the owner Emaar claimed the standard height of Burj Khalifa to be 828 meters, with a total height of 829.8 meters to its tip (there's a 1.7 meter small needle atop the top of spire at 828 meters), making it the tallest building in the world in any categories.

As of 2025, Burj Khalifa has been holding the crown of World's Tallest Building for 15 years, it will keep the crown for another 3 to 5 years, until in 2028 or later when either the Dubai Creek Tower or Jeddah Tower surpasses it.

The highest occupied floor is level 154, which is 584m high from ground. For public sightseeing, there are 3 observation decks, respectively on levels 124,125 and 148. The one on level 148 is now the world's highest observation deck at a height of 555 meters.

Uses:

Mixed-use, the tower is used in a variety of purposes, respectively are Office, Residential, Hotels, Restaurant, Observation, Communication.
The 39th floor or level 39 and floors below are used as hotels or residences by Armani, the floors from level 39 to level 108 are mainly used for residences. Above level 108 to level 154 are office spaces, with the exception of level 124,125 and level 148, which are the 3 separated observation decks for public sightseeing. And there's also a restaurant located at level 122, named At.mosphere.
The floors above level 154 to 163 are all mechanical floors. The number of floors is so huge as there are a total of 2909 stairs from the ground floor to 160th floor.

163 is commonly known as the number of Burj Khalifa's floors, but a 2717-foot building couldn't have only 163 floors even when the spire is removed, right? That is because the floors above level 163 and below the spire are served as the base structure of spire, which is not habitable and also not for mechanical use, but it occupies 46 floors, hence technically the building has 209 floors.

Every year, fireworks show or laser show will take place on Burj Khalifa on New Year's Eve, attracting thousands of people to watch on the scene, and millions watch online in the same time. Laser shows also occur in some other events or festivals.

Design and Development:
It was the government of Dubai made the decision to build a world's tallest building, the intentions of building Burj Khalifa are various and listed below:
1. Dubai wants to make the tourism the emirate's second industry to lighten the reliance on Oil trade.
2. Building a tower that size can greatly improve the reputation of Dubai in the world, and to capture the attention of the world.
3. Bring the title of World's Tallest Building back to Middle East as Khufu Pyramid had ever been the tallest building in the world for more than 4000 years.
4. The ruler of Dubai once said in twitter that the idea of building the Burj Khalifa was inspired by a visit to the Empire State Building in New York City many decades ago in 1960s, the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world at that time, the ruler was deeply inspired by it and generated the idea of a tallest building in his homeland.

Burj Khalifa was designed by Adrian Smith from Chicago-based architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he has also designed some other notable projects like Jin Mao Tower, Wuhan Greenland Center in China, and Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, which is set to become the next tallest building in the world.

The tower is built on a shamrock-shaped footprint, making the tower seen like a letter 'Y' from above in the air, this shape derived from Hymenocallis, also known as desert lily, a local plant live in desert, the tower's cross section area reduces gradually as it rises.

This shape in the one hand is for the stability of the building, the Jeddah Tower which is currently under construction is also based on this shape and the shape can also be found on other structures such as CN Tower, Wuhan Greenland Center and Russia Tower(cancelled). On the other hand, this sort of shape is more suitable for the hotels and residences, in which the scenery from the outdoor should be highly concerned, the Y-shape design can provide the people living in it with views and natural light to the greatest extent, that is why the lower portion that below the level 108 where the Y-shape is more apparent is used for hotels and residences and the upper portion where the Y-shape has almost transformed to circular is occupied by offices, where people working there are supposed to concentrate their focus on their work instead of the scenery

Burj Khalifa was developed by Emaar Properties, a renowned local real estate firm that has also developed many other skyscrapers in Dubai and now they are working on next tallest structure of the world which is temporarily named 'Dubai Creek Tower'.

The construction of Burj Khalifa was contracted by Samsung Construction, a subsidiary of Samsung Group, the group is best known for its electronic products and in respect of construction it had also constructed many famous buildings around the world including Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and Taipei 101 Tower in Taipei.
The construction began in 2004, the building started rising in March 2005.

Tourism and Sightseeing:

Burj Khalifa has the world's highest building-based observation deck. When the tower first opened in 2010, they opened the observation deck on level 124 named At The Top at the same time, it's a observatory that contains outdoor terrace, at 452 meters high, almost only a half height of the tower, even Shanghai World Financial Center which is only 492 meters tall has an observation deck at 474 m high. But At The Top had been the highest observation deck that contains outdoor terraces until the Canton Tower's 488 m high outdoor observatory surpassed it.
In 2014 Burj Khalifa opened its second observation deck named At The Top SKY at level 148 at height of 555 m, surpassed the observation deck of Canton Tower, which was the highest observation deck back then. And there's also an outdoor part, thus became the highest observation deck of the world in both the indoor and outdoor category.

The price of the admission ticket is much higher than other skyscrapers around the world. As of 2025, the standard ticket for accessing the observation decks on 124th and 125th floors costs 145 UAE dirhams, approximately 40 US dollars. The exception is the second half of afternoon and dusk time, which starts at 15:00 and ends at 19:00, it is the ideal time for sightseeing as the scenery is usually most beautiful by this time, and by the way visitors can view both the day views and night views in a single visit, a same visit by that time costs 165 dirhams. Discount admission tickets can be booked from here.
The standard ticket for a visit to all three observation decks costs 399 dirhams, approximately 109 US dollars. For dusk times, it needs 553 dirhams for a same visit.
Note: There are more other options available, and the prices may subject to change, check the building's official website for more details and booking in advance on some third party sites will generally cost less.

Popular Culture:

American film Mission: Impossible - The Ghost Protocol:

In the film, for tracing the exchange of the code between the lady killer Moreau and two other men, Ethan Hunt(Tom Cruise) jumps out from a upper floor around 500 m high to scale on the glass cladding using a pair of special gloves, the destination is a computer service room. In the meanwhile, one of gloves got out of order, which makes him dropped about 30 feet before he steadies himself to continue climbing up using one arm with the left glove, and after climbed to a level at height of 523 m, he breaks the glass and enters the computer room.

Besides the film, in the reality, the French climber Alain Robert who dubbed 'spider-man' as he had scaled numerous skyscrapers before, scaled Burj Khalifa on March 28th 2011, it took him 6 hours to reach the top tip while a large crowd watching from below.