Taif sits at 1,879 metres above sea level, seventy kilometres east of Makkah, and records summer temperatures fifteen degrees cooler than Jeddah. The city's elevation and the moisture trapped by the Sarawat range create the only climate in the Arabian Peninsula capable of sustaining large-scale rose cultivation. By the early twentieth century Taif had become the summer capital of the Kingdom, a role it held formally until air conditioning made Riyadh habitable year-round. The escarpment road linking Jeddah to Taif—originally a caravan track widened by Ottoman engineers in 1880—climbs through forty-three hairpin bends, each numbered and named by the Ministry of Transport. Drivers ascending Al-Hada pass commemorative plaques marking the 1965 paving project that reduced travel time from two days to ninety minutes. Today a Taif trip from Jeddah delivers visitors to a working agricultural economy rather than a resort. The rose harvest runs from late March through mid-May, when thirty thousand seasonal workers hand-pick Damask blooms before dawn to preserve volatile oils. Taif's three hundred rose farms produce seventy per cent of the Middle East's rose water and attar, sold by weight in the heritage souq. The distillation process—petals steeped in copper alembics over wood fires—has remained unchanged since Persian traders introduced it in the ninth century. Each kilogram of attar requires five thousand kilograms of petals and commands prices exceeding gold by weight. Outside harvest season the terraced fields lie fallow, but the souq operates year-round, its stalls stocked with aged reserves and blended oils. Beyond the rose trade, Taif preserves the largest concentration of traditional Hijazi architecture outside Jeddah's historical quarter. The Al-Shubra Palace, completed in 1905 as a summer residence for King Abdulaziz, combines coral-stone walls with teak mashrabiya screens imported from India. The palace now serves as a regional museum, its collection documenting the 1934 unification campaigns and displaying original correspondence between Abdulaziz and British officials. The nearby Okaz Heritage Market replicates the pre-Islamic poetry competition site where the Mu'allaqat—seven odes judged best each year—were inscribed in gold thread and hung inside the Kaaba. Contemporary poets compete each August in a revival event attended by scholars from across the Gulf. Taif's position as a crossroads between coast, plateau, and interior desert has made it a fulcrum of trade and diplomacy for twelve centuries, a role encoded in its street grid and surviving stone khans.