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Rang

The gingerbread city

Sana'a

Tower houses of brown brick, each window and floor outlined in white gypsum like icing.

Sana'a from the roof 200612_yemen-08
Photo: ai@ce, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why Sana'a is baked brick brown

The old city of Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, lies in a mountain valley at about 2,200 metres. It has been lived in for more than two thousand years. Its houses are towers of several storeys, built of stone below and baked brown brick above. Every floor is marked by bands of patterned brickwork, and the windows are framed in white gypsum plaster, renewed regularly. Above each window is a half-moon fanlight of coloured glass, called a qamariya, which glows at night. Visitors have compared the effect to iced gingerbread. The old city became a World Heritage Site in 1986. War and floods since 2015 have damaged many houses.

Baked brick brown#8A5A3CGypsum white#F3F0E8Coloured glass red#C8342BColoured glass green#3E9B5F

Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.

About this page

Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Sanaa" on Wikipedia. If you know Sana'a and we have it wrong, tell us.

More colour cities

All colour cities
🇮🇳 Ruins among golden bouldersHampiThe ruined capital of Vijayanagara lies among heaps of ochre granite boulders and bright green paddy.🇮🇩 Home of court batikYogyakartaThe royal city of central Java, whose classic batik is drawn in brown, indigo and white.🇺🇿 The sand-coloured holy cityBukharaAn oasis city of pale brick, where patterned brickwork does the work of colour and blue domes are accents.🇮🇷 The mud-brick desert cityYazdAn earth-coloured city of domes and wind towers in central Iran, with one tall gateway of blue tile.🇲🇦 The red earth fortress villageAït BenhaddouA fortified village of red-brown earth climbing a hill on the old caravan road south of the Atlas.🇲🇱 City of the great mud mosqueDjennéA town of sun-dried mud brick in Mali, centred on the largest earthen building in the world.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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