Old Muscat is the original walled city, a small and remarkably intact quarter built around the deep natural harbour that made the city its fortune. Today it contains the Sultan's palace (Al Alam), the twin Portuguese forts that guard the harbour entrance (Al Jalali and Al Mirani), a handful of museums, and the restored Muscat Gate. The entire area is compact enough to walk in an hour, though the individual sights reward more time. Outside working hours the streets are quiet to the point of being deserted — most residents have moved to newer parts of the city.
The scale of Old Muscat is deliberately intimate. The buildings are low, the streets narrow, and the arrangement of the palace facing the harbour with the forts on either side reads as obviously theatrical from the waterfront promenade below. This is the Muscat of photographs and tourism brochures, and it earns its place there: the white buildings against bare brown rock, the turquoise water of the harbour, and the twin forts on their rocky promontories make for a genuinely handsome set of views, especially in the softer light of early morning or late afternoon.