The old city is the reason to come to Sana'a — a walled medieval quarter of more than 14,000 tower houses, hundreds of mosques, and the dense web of souks that has barely changed in a thousand years. Inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1986, it is one of the best-preserved Islamic urban environments anywhere, and one of the most photogenic: every tower house is built of stone on the lower floors and mud brick above, every floor banded with brilliant white gypsum decoration around the windows.
You enter through Bab al-Yemen, the southern gate, and walk into the souk: covered lanes for spices, copperware, silver, daggers, salt, and cloth. The Great Mosque is at the heart of the quarter. There is no real grid — wander, get lost, look up at the painted ceilings of the gateways and the stained glass at the tops of the houses. Many of the houses still belong to the families who built them centuries ago.