Today, the Kaaba is a cubical(room) structure. It is fifteen meters tall and ten and a half meters on each side, its corners roughly align with the cardinal directions. The door of the Kaaba is now made of solid gold that was added in 1982. The kiswa ( Kiswa is the large cloth that covers the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia) used to be sent from Egypt with the hajj caravan but today is made in Saudi Arabia. Until the advent of modern transportation, all pilgrims undertook the often dangerous hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca in a large caravan across the desert, leaving from Damascus, Cairo, and other major cities in Arabia, Yemen, or Iraq.
Only Muslims may visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina today from all over the world..
