Hamarweyne — the name means "big Hamar," Hamar being the old Arab name for Mogadishu — is the oldest part of the city, the medieval Arab quarter that was the original settlement from which the whole city grew. Its streets are narrow and irregular, its buildings constructed from the local coral stone that gives the old quarter a distinctive warm grey-brown colour different from the Italian colonial concrete of the newer areas.
The district is home to the Arba'a Rukun and Fakhr al-Din mosques, the oldest surviving structures in the city. The street pattern dates from before European contact; some of the lanes are barely wide enough for two people to pass. Civil war damage is still visible — buildings with shelled facades, gaps in the streetscape where structures were destroyed — but reconstruction is ongoing. A walk through Hamarweyne with a local guide gives a sense of the city's deep historical roots that no museum visit can match.