Shibam, Yemen

Shibam (13316 inhabitants) is a town in the Hadromouth Valley in central Yemen. Its distinctive architecture was described by travellers in the early 20th century. The tall adobe buildings between five and nine storeys high are built so densely together that residents can visit their neighbors by passing from roof to roof. In the 16th century there were about 500 such buildings with about 7 thousand inhabitants. The walls of the houses from 1 m at the base thinned to less than 30 cm at the top and were plastered with mud and chopped straw. The tallest are 30 m high and are clustered together. The tops and base are painted with white plaster. The ground and first floors are used for animals and food supplies. The second floor is for entertainment, and from the third floor up are the quarters for the women and children. Presumably, the construction of such dwellings was necessitated by the scarcity of land after the floods of 1532.

Today the town is surrounded on three sides by groves of date palms. The city of Shibam is one of the oldest with the best vertical urban planning. In 1982, the old city of "skyscrapers", Shibam, was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.