Said to be one of the world's earliest multi-storey structures, the Palace of Ghamdan is now largely in ruins — much was demolished in the early Islamic period — but the remnants stand within the old city and are worth visiting for the sense of how ancient and layered Sana'a actually is. Even in ruin it conveys something of the ambition of pre-Islamic Arabian architecture.
Palace of Ghamdan
Ruins of a legendary pre-Islamic multi-storey palace
A story
Ancient sources describe Ghamdan as a twenty-storey palace with rooms of alabaster and marble, topped by a bronze lion whose roar warned of approaching enemies. Whether or not that was ever literally true, the structure is mentioned in pre-Islamic Arabian poetry as a symbol of power and magnificence. What stands today is a fraction of the original.