Colour cities
174 cities and regions known for a colour: blue Jodhpur, pink Jaipur, red Marrakech, white Santorini. And 321 more places that gave a colour its name or its material.
🇮🇳 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 gingerbread citySana'aTower houses of brown brick, each window and floor outlined in white gypsum like icing.
🇲🇦 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.
🇲🇱 Sand-coloured city of scholarsTimbuktuEarthen mosques the colour of the desert, and the deep indigo veils of the Tuareg.
🇮🇹 The city that named a colourSienaA Tuscan hill city of warm brown brick, and the source of the earth pigment called sienna.
🇺🇸 The adobe citySanta FeNew Mexico's capital, where a city rule keeps buildings in earth-coloured adobe style with turquoise trim.Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Hampi In: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, source
- Yogyakarta Id: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Bukhara Uz: Euyasik, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Yazd Ir: Ninara, CC BY 2.0, source
- Sanaa Ye: ai@ce, CC BY 2.0, source
- Ait Benhaddou Ma: Wonker, CC BY 2.0, source
- Djenne Ml: Andy Gilham, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Timbuktu Ml: Drawn by Martin Bernatz after a sketch by Heinrich Barth, Public domain, source
- Siena It: Massimo Catarinella, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Santa Fe Us: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source