Muscat
— — white houses between the mountain and the sea.
Not only on a wall.
“Oman's capital stretches in a long thin line along the Gulf of Oman, pressed between the Arabian Sea and the dark folded ridges of the Al Hajar mountains. The old harbour at Mutrah holds its corniche and its souq, the two Portuguese forts still anchor the headlands of Old Muscat, and the whole city keeps to low whitewashed buildings, a building code that has held the skyline since the 1970s.
Muscat, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Muscat is the capital of the Sultanate of Oman, on the country's northeastern coast where the Gulf of Oman meets the Arabian Sea. The metropolitan area runs roughly 50 kilometres along the coast, hemmed in between the water and the steep folded ridges of the Al Hajar al Gharbi range. The original walled town of Old Muscat sits in a small natural harbour, with the older trading port of Mutrah just to the northwest. Greater Muscat's population is around 1.7 million, more than a third of all Oman.
Two sixteenth-century Portuguese forts, Al Jalali and Al Mirani, still flank the entrance to Old Muscat harbour above the Al Alam Palace. The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, completed in 2001 on the western edge of the city, holds a prayer hall under a 50-metre dome and a single hand-loomed Persian carpet that covers more than 4,000 square metres. The Royal Opera House Muscat, opened in 2011, was the first opera house on the Arabian peninsula. A height code keeps almost all of Muscat to low whitewashed buildings, a skyline distinct from any other Gulf capital.
The Mutrah Corniche runs about three kilometres along the old harbour, with the covered Mutrah Souq opening off it, one of the oldest markets in the Arab world, traded in frankincense, silver, and textiles for centuries. Old Muscat, a short drive east through the coastal hills, holds the Al Alam Palace, the National Museum, and the two harbour forts. The Grand Mosque is open to non-Muslim visitors most mornings, modest dress required. The cool season runs October through March; summer temperatures along the coast routinely cross 40 degrees Celsius.