This ancient city has seen it all over nearly two millennia. It has survived a bloody civil war in recent years and centuries of baking under a relentless desert sun to go with a history of flooding ...

In Yemen’s Wadi Ḥaḍramawt, the town of Shibam rises like a skyline made of clay, with mud towers reaching five, eight, or even eleven stories high. It looks almost futuristic, but it’s very old.

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 ...