Old City of Sana'a is one of the most striking urban landscapes in the Islamic world. The city sits at 2,200 metres and has been continuously inhabited for more than 2,500 years. Its tower houses — built of dark basalt stone and rammed earth, with elaborately decorated white gypsum plasterwork — are unlike anything else in the region. The old city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, though it was placed on the Danger List in 2015 due to the civil war. Several historic buildings have been damaged by air strikes.
Shibam in the Hadramawt is the most photographed place in Yemen and one of the most extraordinary urban sights in the world. Some 500 mud-brick tower houses rise between five and eleven storeys from the desert floor of Wadi Hadramawt, most of them built in the 16th century. UNESCO listed it in 1982. The sight of them rising from the sand with the canyon walls behind is genuinely spectacular. Shibam is often called the oldest skyscraper city in the world.
Marib holds the ruins of the ancient Sabean civilization. The Great Marib Dam — built around 750 BCE, rebuilt and expanded over centuries — once irrigated 70 square kilometres of desert and supported a population that would have seemed impossible in such a landscape. The Awwam Temple (associated with the Queen of Sheba legend) and the Barran Temple are both partially excavated and deeply evocative. Marib has been a major conflict zone since 2014 and sustained serious damage.
Socotra is an island group in the Arabian Sea, 240 kilometres from the mainland. Its isolation over millions of years produced an ecosystem so unlike the rest of the world that it is sometimes called the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean. One third of its plant species exist nowhere else on earth. The dragon blood tree (Dracaena cinnabari), with its inverted-umbrella canopy and blood-red resin, is the island's emblem. Socotra is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It remains somewhat more accessible than the mainland, though flights have been disrupted by the conflict.
The Haraz Mountains west of Sana'a are home to some of the most dramatic mountain villages in Arabia. Towns perched on ridgelines above terraced fields, accessible by winding roads with enormous drops. The mountain town of Kawkaban sits at 2,900 metres above a sheer cliff face. The area produces some of Yemen's best coffee.
Hadramawt Valley stretches for over 550 kilometres through the eastern desert. Beyond Shibam, the valley contains Sayun (with its whitewashed sultan's palace), Tarim (known for its Hadrami mosques and minarets), and dozens of ancient villages cut from the same pale rock as the canyon walls. The Hadramawt diaspora spread across the Indian Ocean world — to East Africa, India, and Southeast Asia — and left remarkable traces in architecture and culture as far away as Indonesia.