Greg Girard’s images have helped to define how the world sees Hong Kong and Tokyo. From the labyrinthine alleys of Kowloon Walled City to the electric sprawl of Shinjuku at night, the Canadian photographer has shaped the collective imagination of some of Asia’s most mythologised urban centres. He’ll tell you that he was simply in the right place at the right time – but a career like his is rarely accidental. 

Ahead of the 2026 edition of Art Basel Hong Kong, Monocle sat down with Girard at the opening of his latest exhibition, HKG-TYO 1974-2023, at WKM Gallery in Wong Chuk Hang. He discusses his special relationship with the two cities and how seeing the world as an outsider became his greatest gift.

Why did you choose to pair Hong Kong and Tokyo for this exhibition?
I have always wanted to. I spent the late 1970s in Tokyo, before Blade Runner looked at Asian cities as some kind of near-future dystopia. I moved to Hong Kong in 1982, during what people now look back on as a golden age. Both cities have been perceived as bigger than themselves, like myths. But this show looks at life in both places on a personal, ordinary street level. No bigger narrative is needed.

Your work often challenges pre-existing narratives. Where does that perspective come from?
Being an outsider allowed me to break the patterns of given places and get into less glamorous ones. Kowloon Walled City, for example, felt like a myth to many local Hong Kongers. It was thought of for crime, gangs and chaos, and it had only been [photographed] in black and white, perpetuating this notion of danger, poverty and otherness. But not growing up surrounded by these preconceptions, I allowed myself to get lost in it and discover its life and colours. That motivated me to set the record straight [for the people who lived there] but also to not shy away from how completely insane it was.

More recently this mentality took me to Sakura [a common name for snack bars] that are found all over Japan. They’re not fashionable and they’re not even on Google Maps because they’re not interested in attracting new clientele. The project [Snack Sakura], now a published book, took me to places where there was no reason to go. I had to work my way in but maybe being a foreigner with a camera helped. That’s the gift of not belonging.

How have external pressures from magazines to social media shaped your work?
When I started [my career], magazines were one of the only accessible entry points for someone like me. But after 20 years of working for them, I hit a limit. I bought a different camera and told myself: when I’m using this, I’m only doing it for me. I do my best work when I do it for myself. Not getting attention turned out to be a really good thing for developing my craft. But it’s true that these days, that’s a luxury. With social media, everybody is a public personality – something that used to require skill.

More than ever, shooting for yourself rather than a platform is a very conscious choice, and one I welcome photographers to make more often. We all have a different way of understanding craft and our purpose. We all have something to bring, regardless of the platforms existing today.

For example there are pictures in this exhibition, such as ‘Cathay Pacific 747 with Lion Rock and Kowloon Walled City’, that didn’t make it into the magazines [when] I shot them in 1989. But here they are.

What keeps you grounded in your craft after all these years?
Photography is a way of not being overwhelmed. It’s a chance to get out of myself – to not be locked in my head. It’s my way of existing in the world. And it’s something that is completely open and endless. There’s nothing you can’t photograph. There’s no such thing as bad weather. There’s no such thing as something not being attractive enough. There’s no such thing as something not being worthy. It’s infinite.

1.
‘Threading Inwards’
CHAT, The Mills
Hong Kong was once home to a thriving rag trade and the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT) explores this history from a repurposed cotton mill in Tsuen Wan. In this flagship show, 14 artists and four curators from across Asia examine spirituality and the role that rugs, carpets and other textiles play in rituals and ceremonies. Don’t miss Marcos Kueh’s monumental new work, The Spirit of Labour: Zhinü, the latest in his ongoing textile series that draws on Industrial Revolution-era union banners.
‘Threading Inwards’ is on at CHAT until 28 June.

2.
‘Certainly’
Gold by Serakai Studio
The industrial-turned-artsy neighbourhood of Wong Chuk Hang has a new resident: a salon and exhibition space called Gold. Its inaugural show, Certainly, is inspired by artist-composer La Monte Young’s 1960 event score “Draw a straight line and follow it” and invites artists to meditate on the condition of uncertainty. For Serakai Studio co-founder and curatorial director Tobias Berger, the theme is particularly pertinent to those working in the contemporary art field. “You have to be flexible and you have to like uncertainty,” he says. Berger whisked our culture editor around Wong Chuk Hang for our newspaper, The Hong Kong Correspondent – see it here.
‘Certainly’ is on at Serakai Studio’s Gold until 3 May.

3.
‘Site-seeing’
Para Site
Alternative art institution Para Site has turned 30 and it’s marking the milestone with a year of exhibitions. Launching the line-up is Site-seeing – a showcase referencing a group show from 1996, giving artists from the region another opportunity to examine city life. Expect barbed-wire curtains, unmanned surveillance stations and lots of screens. Thai artist Nawin Nuthong’s digital triptych is a highlight.
‘Site-seeing’ is on at Para Site until 14 June.

4.
‘HKG-TYO 1974-2023’ 
WKM Gallery
Wong Chuk Hang’s WKM Gallery is on a mission to elevate photography in the Asian art scene and this solo exhibition by Canadian artist Greg Girard (read our interview with the photographer here) could be just the ticket. The show features shots of Tokyo and Hong Kong taken in the 1970s to the present day, contrasting with scenes from the cities’ various neighbourhoods. “We started talking about doing an exhibition around a year ago,” says WKM director William Kayne Mukai. “We wanted to create something special and unique, and through our conversations we realised that we both have strong links with Hong Kong and Tokyo.” 
‘HKG-TYO 1974-2023’ is on at WKM Gallery until 23 May. 

5.
‘Ted Gahl: Roam’ 
Villepin 
Villepin recently celebrated its five-year anniversary. During those years, the two-storey gallery on Hollywood Road has held ambitious and imaginative exhibitions for the likes of Zao Wou-Ki and Myonghi Kang. Gallerist and founder Arthur de Villepin has a personal connection with the work of Ted Gahl, having first started to collect the American painter’s abstract pieces in 2021. Now, Villepin has dedicated an entire exhibition to the artist’s work. Once you’ve revelled in the calming, colourful pieces, take a peek at the gallery’s newly renovated library. 
‘Ted Gahl: Roam’ is on at Villepin until 7 May. 

Monocle’s outposts around the world act as embassies for our business. Our offices, shops and cafés are places where you can enter our domain and leave the rest of the world behind. If, for example, you push open the door of our shop in Merano, South Tyrol, its manager, Linda Egger, will immediately set about making you feel at home. She’ll dispense useful information about the town, suggest where you might have supper and hopefully entice you to make a small trade deal for a Monocle product or two. She’s a Monocle ambassador who represents the brand and can talk with passion and knowledge about our history.

We are blessed to have lots of people in our business – from editors to baristas – who are good at this diplomatic work. Some are cultural attachés; others sit in the commercial section of the mission. One or two occasionally need to adopt a military attaché’s mantle when world events demand nimble manoeuvres. And it all works rather nicely.

While some might question the role of actual national embassies at a time when diplomacy can occasionally seem irrelevant, the best of them still do vital work. They take care of their country’s diaspora, build bridges with their host nations, manage moments of tension and use soft power to make friends. They host parties at which political differences are forgotten as guests sample wine from the home country.

It’s why, for this issue, we asked our foreign editor, Alexis Self, to put together The Good Embassy Guide, celebrating missions that do their nations proud. In those pages, you’ll see how five Nordic nations came together on one site in Berlin in a display of their shared histories. We’ll take you to the Italian embassy in London to explore how it has become a showcase for the national brand and look at how the Peruvians use food to make friends in Washington. It’s a story about why physical space matters. Let’s not pretend that laptop diplomacy is a substitute.

It was also an embassy that hosted our editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, and Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, for their interview in this issue. They sat down together at the Canadian mission in Tokyo to discuss how middle-sized powers can become less dependent on the US, forge new trade ties that aren’t jolted by fluctuating tariffs and better defend themselves. And it’s a fascinating conversation about national brands and considered diplomacy too.

This issue is also our Style Special. As well as guiding you to some new retail outposts and selecting brands that you should know, it includes some illuminating interviews. One of these is with Olivier Bron, the CEO of US department store Bloomingdale’s. He has been in position for two years and is tasked with revitalising the company – and not just what’s on sale. “Getting the merchandise right isn’t enough,” he tells our reporter Rosemary Feitelberg. “You need to have the right marketing, the right campaigns and the right store design.” And it seems to be working. But what makes the story so fascinating is that he’s delivering this turnaround at a time when Saks Global has filed for bankruptcy and many analysts have been predicting the end of the US department store.

And there are many more stories in the issue that show how you can create your own path and move beyond the conventional narrative. In our Business pages, for example, we spotlight the Japanese shops rethinking retail (from football to convenience stores). In Culture, we meet Martin Krasnik, the editor of Danish long-reads newspaper Weekendavisen, which is widely read in print. And in our Expo, we present dealers who have allowed their passion and heart to guide their successful businesses.

But it’s the idea of us all finding our inner ambassador that stayed with me most while reading the proof pages for this issue: how being a good representative, taking care to explain your stance and even looking the part matter. And that embassy party, of course. If you would like to drop me a diplomatically worded note, you can always find me at at@monocle.com.

Subscribers can read everything from our April issue, here.

If your only exposure to embassies is through the Madeline series of children’s books or adverts for Ferrero Rocher, you might think that these buildings’ sole use is as the backdrop to glamorous black-tie events. While this is a notable (and noble) aspect of their role, modern embassies play a unique and multi-faceted part in 21st-century statecraft. 

As Monocle’s foreign editor, I more than do my part for the hors d’oeuvres industrial complex by attending a great deal of events at embassies and ambassadorial residences. Some recent highlights include: a panel discussion at the Finnish residence about the country’s world-beating media literacy; an exhibition opening at the Italian embassy for a Milan-born, London-based artist; and a Fat Thursday reception at the Polish embassy featuring six different types of doughnut. This short list is fairly illustrative of the public-facing role of embassies but what I don’t see, as someone who lives in the land of their birth, is the workaday functions: the consular services that they offer citizens abroad, from renewing passports to helping co-ordinate journeys home; the economic and commercial ties that they foster; the important information gathering that they do; and, perhaps their most elemental role – a physical sanctuary for people in need. Those that function well and look good reap daily reward for their nations. Monocle’s Good Embassies Guide, which features in our April issue, celebrates those that perform with aplomb.

At a time of fracturing geopolitics, diplomacy is never far from the front pages. And yet its traditional practices are under attack, negatively affecting its chances of success. In common with other leaders, US president Donald Trump is circumventing the usual channels and venues in favour of glitzy set-piece events. Rather than sending secretary of state Marco Rubio to pound the airstairs, the president entrusts Steve Witkoff, a New York real-estate mogul with no prior diplomatic experience, with his most crucial overseas missions. This snubbing of career diplomats is compounded by a paring back of resources. As Henry Rees-Sheridan details here, Rubio announced in April 2025 that the State Department would be shrinking its diplomatic footprint through the closure of 132 offices worldwide. A document leaked shortly afterwards revealed a recommendation to axe a further 10 embassies and 17 consulates. All of this was, as Rubio put it, to secure a better “return on investment” for the US taxpayer. 

When looked at through a 21st-century lens of business optimisation and quick returns, diplomats and embassies might look like a waste of resources – it takes decades to train the former and almost as long to build the latter. This same argument sees both as relics of a time when information travelled glacially and passport applications required such things as pens, paperclips and stamps. Such bloodless assessments are plain wrong. At times of war and geopolitical flux a businessman cannot do a diplomat’s job – and a co-working space on the 15th floor of a glassy tower cannot substitute for an historic and lovingly decorated downtown embassy. 

Bilateral relationships are best managed by those trained in the art of diplomacy. These are people who have immersed themselves in the politics, culture and media of another nation and are able to communicate its idiosyncrasies back to their home capitals. If ambassadors are the literal personifications of their countries’ governments, embassies are those nations’ opportunity to present themselves through a highly persuasive combination of design and hospitality. 

The Good Embassies Guide is an exploration of best practice in this regard. We called correspondents and friends around the world and asked them to nominate their favourite spots. We then sorted the top eight into distinct categories that spoke to what we thought each excelled at: the best embassy for soft-power promotion, the one with the best food, the best use of a historic building, the best shared embassy, the best embassy upgrade, the best nod to local traditions, the best interiors and the best architecture. The final list takes us from London to Singapore and Stockholm via Berlin, Seoul, Rome, Washington and Addis Ababa. These buildings are all special in their own way but they also all share one characteristic: they are excellent advertisements for their nations. If you have your own favourites, please do get in touch – through appropriate diplomatic channels, of course. 
 
Our favourite embassies, celebrated below:

Embassies are back on the geopolitical front line. Though seen by some as relics of a bygone diplomatic age, many missions are becoming increasingly important in terms of security and intelligence gathering. Cold War-era patterns have re-emerged, particularly among Chinese, Russian and US embassies. Diplomatic buildings can also double as intelligence arenas with sprawling compounds and diplomats who often wear two hats. Following political violence directed towards embassies, especially in regions such as the Middle East, features that include setback distances and layered perimeters became de rigueur for diplomatic architecture. Today they’re becoming more pronounced.

Security and intelligence-gathering considerations help to explain China’s push to secure a new mission building at London’s Royal Mint Court. But the UK’s approval of the compound is not quite as surprising as some critics suggest. Though the decision sparked protests and legal challenges, it reflects a view that one purpose-built site is easier to monitor and regulate than several scattered offices.

Yet there are important differences from the Cold War era. Today’s embassies are nodes in a data-dense, commercially connected world. Investment, telecommunications, science and technology officers sit alongside those with a political brief. Chancelleries increasingly matter for economic statecraft, overseeing everything from investment screening to sanctions enforcement and technological diplomacy.

At the opposite end of the spectrum to Royal Mint Court are the small resident missions (or “mini-embassies”) central to contemporary competition in the Indo-Pacific region. Under the Biden administration, the US opened embassies in several Pacific Island states, such as Tonga and the Solomon Islands, as part of its outreach efforts with regard to Chinese competition.

Leveraging its Indo-Pacific overseas territories, France has also re-established or expanded its diplomatic footprint, including a new embassy in Samoa last year and a defence mission at its embassy in Fiji in 2023. These modest posts, often led by a resident ambassador supported by a handful of diplomats and local staff, typically manage development programmes and political reporting. While such missions are relatively inexpensive, they signal commitment in ways that non-resident accreditation can’t, anchoring relationships and building trust. The effect is reminiscent of the Cold War scramble for recognition among newly independent states but today the currency is coastguard support, infrastructure finance and climate adaptation funds.

Embassies are again theatres for domestic politics. Reporting on US diplomats’ involvement in fundraising linked to the country’s 250th-anniversary celebrations this year reveals that ambassadors are being encouraged to seek corporate backing for commemorative events, blurring the line between public diplomacy and partisan spectacle. When embassies seem to serve domestic political branding as much as foreign policy, it contradicts statesman Arthur Vandenberg’s maxim, “Politics stops at the water’s edge.” In this new era, the embassy is not fading. It reveals how states understand power, legitimacy and competition in the 21st century.

There aren’t many diplomatic postings where your 06.00 alarm can be replaced by the roar of an F-16 fighter jet but that is how most of my recent mornings in Mogadishu have begun. After this wake-up call, I have a two-minute walk from my armoured pod to the chancery – a stroll under Somalia’s intense sun that feels very different to what I experienced in my previous postings in Paris or Istanbul.

In 2013 the UK became one of the first Western countries to reopen an embassy in Somalia. I have been the British ambassador to Mogadishu for almost a year. We are based between the international airport and the sea. The view over the Indian Ocean helps to clear the mind but swimming is not encouraged because of lurking sharks. The embassy represents the full spectrum of the UK’s international activity, with diplomats, military colleagues and humanitarian experts.

Since opening, we have worked closely with successive Somali governments and international partners to address threats from terrorist groups such as Al-Shabaab and Islamic State, combat international piracy and alleviate human suffering. We work with the African Union’s peacekeeping mission and the UN’s logistical support. The sound of the large, white UN helicopters taking off or coming back from the front lines is a near-constant backdrop to our daily lives. There has been real progress but a lot of the gains remain fragile and Somalia is a tough environment in which to work. It is one of the UK diplomatic network’s highest-threat posts and so security for me and the team is the top priority. I have become used to hopping in and out of body armour and armoured vehicles. It’s not always the most comfortable way to work but it enables us to get out and about and do our jobs as diplomats. Mogadishu is our base but I travel around the country.

We also find time for more traditional diplomatic networking. Earlier this year we held a Burns Night celebration. There’s nothing like poetry and a ceilidh for bringing people together, even in a conflict zone. For a moment, I was sure that the Kenyan ambassador’s heart was in the Highlands. Building networks across the country and understanding how to support progress is why we’re here. That is something in the shared interests of Somalia, the UK and the wider international community. I just need to remember to hold on to my ear plugs.

Charles King is the UK ambassador to the Federal Republic of Somalia.

Switzerland’s embassy in Seoul is a stylish manifestation of the two nations’ diplomatic relationship, which has blossomed in recent years. A Helvetic take on a hanok – a traditional Korean wooden house with no nails or pegs – it is designed in a large horseshoe shape, forming an arc around an open courtyard and connecting the public chancery, offices and residential wings. “It feels incredibly dynamic,” says ambassador Nadine Olivieri Lozano, who was previously posted to the Netherlands and Iran.

The plot is positioned so that visitors in the courtyard can take in the greenery of Gyeonghuigung park, while elements such as geothermal heating and electricity sourced from solar panels give the property a sustainable Swiss spin. “Diplomacy is about connection and trust,” says Olivieri Lozano. “We want Swiss citizens in South Korea to feel supported and our South Korean friends to feel that this is a place for dialogue and exchange.”

The space in which this sense of quietude exists was once much noisier. Songwol-dong was a boisterous neighbourhood before the government razed its dilapidated buildings in the 2010s to erect glassy skyscrapers. Swiss architecture studio Burckhardt endeavoured to make the embassy, which opened in 2019, a tribute to the hanoks that would have once surrounded it. Concrete surfaces required for security reasons have been imprinted to feature an intricate Korean-style façade of wood grain; these invoke construction features found in cities such as Bern, Zürich and Geneva. “The irony is that despite being characteristic of Swiss buildings, this kind of design could never be achieved back home,” says Nicolas Vaucher, the studio’s lead architect. “It would be far too expensive. We could only afford to do this here.”

The embassy regularly hosts events across business, literature and design but the hanok strikes a deeper chord with Seoul residents beyond the varied programme. “The building respects the memory of what stood here before,” says the Swiss ambassador. “It shows that progress and remembrance can coexist, which is an important message in a city that’s constantly reinventing itself.”

In Monocle’s April issue, we profile our selection of the best foreign embassies in the world — this is just one of the establishments featured. See the rest of our favourites here.

Alfredo Ferrero has no problem attracting high-profile guests to functions at the Peruvian embassy in Washington. “They know that they will have good food here,” the ambassador says with a booming laugh, surveying the dishes before him. The five-course feast was prepared by Peruvian chef Michael Ciuffardi, who caters for the embassy’s events. Last July, Ciuffardi won the Embassy Chef Challenge, a contest in which cooks from 34 Washington embassies compete to serve the best diplomatic dish. It was yet another feather in Peruvian cuisine’s cap.

It’s a special year for this embassy, as Peru celebrates 200 years of diplomatic ties with the US. This means plenty of opportunities for Ciuffardi to impress at events on Washington’s “embassy row”. This building was designed in the Italian classicist style in the early 20th century. An on-site art gallery provides an inviting space for showcasing Ciuffardi’s canapés at openings and events. For the most prestigious functions, however, guests head out to Ferrero’s residence in the city’s northwest, a three-storey colonial-revival-style property built in 1928.

As he adds the finishing touches to his ceviche, Ciuffardi – who is also the head chef of Virginia’s Inca Social restaurants – tells Monocle that every plate of Peruvian cuisine tells a different story, reflecting his country’s diverse history and geography. “We have grown because we have respected our ingredients but also absorbed techniques from other countries,” he says. Then there’s the diversity of produce from Peru’s three climate zones, ranging from octopus and mahi-mahi from its coastline to the chillies and grains found on its Andean peaks. When catering for embassy events, the objective is “to represent the coast, the Andes and the Amazon in every dish”, says Ciuffardi.

For ambassador Ferrero, this bounty translates into an abundance of diplomatic opportunities. “It’s a way to sell Peru,” says the gregarious diplomat. “We believe that through gastronomy, we can improve tourism and exports. And it’s also important for diplomacy.” Improved relations with Washington show that the proof is in the ceviche.

In Monocle’s April issue, we profile our selection of the best foreign embassies in the world — this is just one of the establishments featured. See the rest of our favourites here.

On a mild March morning, the façade of Rome’s Palazzo Pamphilj is shrouded in a giant hoarding featuring an outline of the 17th-century Baroque masterpiece with a vast Valentino billboard poster smack bang in the middle. But rest assured, the Brazilian embassy in Rome hasn’t decided to turn Piazza Navona into an Italian Times Square. The billboard, which changes every two weeks, will only be there until June and has a specific function. Its advertising space is funding restoration work to both the exterior of the building and the exquisite frescoes within. The refurbishment, which includes giving the building’s bathrooms and four kitchens a makeover, is the first in a quarter of a century and an investment in one of Brazil’s key bilateral relationships.

Designed in large part by master architect Francesco Borromini and containing friezes by Baroque greats such as Agostino Tassi, Andrea Camassei and Pietro da Cortona, Palazzo Pamphilj is a piece of Italian heritage that Brazil knows it is lucky to possess. The building would be unlikely to fall into foreign hands if it were to come up for sale today. “There is an enormous attraction to this palazzo,” says Brazil’s ambassador to Italy, Renato Mosca de Souza, dressed in an impeccably cut suit and brown suede loafers. “People appreciate that we keep it in a spectacular condition. It’s an asset to Brazilian diplomacy.”

The 16,000 sq m building includes nine rooms featuring frescoes by nine artists and the embassy gives free tours to the public in Italian and Portuguese a couple of times a week. When Monocle visits, several of the guests are returning visitors. There’s a huge music room, the Sala Palestrina, with a ceiling that reaches 14 metres at its highest point. And one must not forget the Cortona Gallery, the most impressive room of them all, which extends more than 30 metres and has windows that overlook the piazza. On its ceiling are stunning paintings depicting the epic story of Aeneas.

The palazzo takes its name from the noble family who once lived here, which included Pope Innocent X. Brazil first rented it in the 1920s and was able to purchase it in 1960 – it was evidently not put off by the rumour that the said pope’s sister-in-law, Donna Olimpia, haunts its hallways. It was bought for ITL 900m (about €16m in today’s money) at a time when Brazil was experiencing an industrial boom and seeking to expand its global soft power.

The building certainly projects prestige. One imagines that lunch here often leads to deals (on the menu the day we visit were Italian gnocchi and a Brazil-inspired guava dessert). But the meticulous protection of the artwork in a space that includes an embassy, a consulate, a cultural centre, private offices and an ambassadorial apartment – as well as rooms for the green-coated housekeepers who act as sofa-plumpers-in-chief – says a lot more.

The desire of the ambassador to safeguard the building and its artworks is a clear example of collaboration and respect between nations – ideals that are at the heart of diplomacy. Mosca de Souza is animated as we enter the Sala di Bacco, where two restorers are working on the frescoes. “The fact that we bought this building is important,” he says. “It’s Italian and Baroque. But we made an intense effort to transform it into a Brazilian headquarters.”

In Monocle’s April issue, we profile our selection of the best foreign embassies in the world — this is just one of the establishments featured. See the rest of our favourites here.

In April 2025, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, proposed a reorganisation of his department – which oversees the country’s 271 embassies and consulates – involving the elimination of 132 domestic offices. Part of Rubio’s aim was to secure a better “return on investment” in foreign affairs for US taxpayers. No embassies or consulates abroad were scheduled for the chop but a separate, leaked internal document had already hinted at more drastic plans, recommending the closure of 10 US embassies and 17 consulates. Many were in Europe and Africa – including five consulates in France, two in Germany and one in the UK – but posts in Asia and the Caribbean were also named. The document suggested replacing some traditional outposts with “Flex-style” light consulates.

The economic anxiety betrayed by the style and substance of such statements and documents is understandable. Acquiring and maintaining embassies is expensive. For nations seeking to set up a diplomatic property, the first thing to worry about is planning permission. “It’s very complicated to take a property registered as residential and convert it into the sui generis category required for embassies,” says Edmond Ibrahimi, the director of London-based estate agent Propertalis, which works with nations seeking such premises. “In an ideal case, you find a commercial building, which is easier to convert. But even then, you need to comply with all the local planning rules.”

In London, countries that want to enter the embassy market can expect to pay between €3m and over €30m for a suitable property. “For a small country, securing that amount of money from the foreign office for a new embassy isn’t easy,” says Ibrahimi. On top of this, there are labour costs. Though diplomats’ ostensibly glamorous lives attract cultural attention, most people working at a given embassy are not nationals of the country that it represents but local contract workers who have fewer protections than full-time diplomatic staff – and who make soft targets for governments looking to trim costs.

So, what do countries get for the money that they invest in physical diplomacy? It remains the case that certain practical tasks, such as intelligence roles, can only be performed on foreign soil. But some nations use embassies as such direct instruments of fiscal gain that they can be said to pay for themselves. The UAE deploys embassies as the spearheads of economic deals, facilitating port bids, opening doors for renewable energy contracts or providing quiet rooms in which sovereign-wealth-related conversations begin before they appear in any press release. When a UAE mission opened in Tel Aviv under the Abraham Accords in 2021, a free-trade agreement was signed within the next year (though it did not enter into force until 2023). Following this pattern, the UAE has established embassies ahead of investment frameworks across Africa and Central Asia. Skilfully blending physical diplomacy and deal-making in this way has earned the emirates outsized influence on the most pressing issues in world politics, such as the future of Gaza, Ukraine and energy supplies.

Aside from hard economic benefits, embassies remain one of the best ways to project soft power. An embassy can carry prestige, especially if it’s in a prime location. “Owning one in London is a pride thing,” says Ibrahimi. “It shows that the country is serious about international diplomacy and committed to serving its nationals abroad.”

Perhaps more than any other country, Turkey understands this. It has the world’s third-largest diplomatic network (252 diplomatic and consular missions), behind only China and the US. It uses this to consolidate influence where it already has deep cultural and political roots. The country has operated embassies for years in Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania – all nations with small populations, low trade volumes and limited strategic resources. But Turkey’s physical diplomacy goes beyond embassies and consulates. In October 2024, its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, travelled to Tirana to inaugurate the Namazgah mosque, the largest in the Balkans. Built in an Ottoman architectural style and incorporating a library, an exhibition hall and a Qur’anic school, it was funded in part by Turkey’s state religious authority. There is no trade agreement attached; the point is the country’s cultural influence.

Meanwhile, China, the US’s only true peer nation, is expanding its diplomatic footprint for both economic and cultural reasons. Beijing maintains the most extensive diplomatic network in the world (274 overseas missions), having overtaken Washington in 2019. This growth has been closely aligned with China’s Belt and Road Initiative and strategic outreach in Africa and other countries in the developing world. Many Chinese missions integrate cultural diplomacy while facilitating infrastructure investment and, in some regions, help to extend China’s security reach – a holistic strategy for a country with global ambitions.