You are in: Middle East -> Yemen -> Old Walled City of Shibam, and traditional search or Image Gallery will yield results of this site only
Old Walled City of Shibam
| Site number: | 192 |
|
| Type of site: | Heritage in danger | |
| Date: | 16th century | |
| Date of Inscription: | 1982 | |
| Location: | Middle East, Yemen, Hadramaut Governorate, in the Wadi Hadramaut, Seiyun District | |
Up to 75 images are shown here. Click on each for more details or on Image Gallery for more images.
| Description: |
Surrounded by a fortified wall, the 16th-century city of Shibam is one of the oldest and best examples of urban planning based on the principle of vertical construction. Its impressive tower-like structures rise out of the cliff and have given the city the nickname of ‘the Manhattan of the desert’. --WHMNet paraphrase from the description at WHC Site, where additional information is available. For 360 degree imaging of this site, click here. |
|
| Shibam (Arabic: شبام) is a town in Hadramawt, Yemen with about 7,000 inhabitants. It has been the capital of the Hadramawt Kingdom for several periods of time. Shibam owes its fame to its distinct architecture, which now is on UNESCOs programme to safeguard the human cultural heritage. The houses of Shibam are all made out of mud bricks, but still there are about 500 tower houses, rising 5 to 9 stories high. While Shibam has existed for around 2,000 years, most of the city's houses come mainly from the 16th century. However, many were rebuilt over and over again during the last few centuries. Shibam is often called "the oldest skyscraper-city in the world", or "Manhattan of the desert". --Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. For 360 degree imaging of this site, click here. | ||
| Rights of Image: | 1001wonders.org | |
| Source: | http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/192 | |
| Source2: | http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/192 | |
| Reference: | 1. UNESCO World Heritage Center, Site Page. | |