Sanaa
— — the city built in gingerbread and white lace.
Not only on a wall.
“One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, set on a high plateau in Yemen's western mountains at about 2,250 metres. The old walled city is the part the world remembers — tower-houses of rammed earth and fired brick, eight or nine storeys tall, the upper floors traced with white gypsum around windows that hold qamariya stained glass. There are some 6,500 houses of this kind inside the walls, and the great Jami al-Kabir mosque is near the centre. UNESCO listed it in 1986. from the studio
Sanaa, 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.
Sanaa is the constitutional capital of Yemen, set on a high plateau in the western highlands at roughly 2,250 metres above sea level, which makes it one of the highest capital cities in the world. It has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years; local tradition traces its founding to Shem, son of Noah, and Old Sanaa is documented as a major centre as early as the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. The walled old city covers about 1 square kilometre and contains roughly 6,500 historic tower-houses and over 100 mosques, including the Great Mosque of Sanaa (al-Jami al-Kabir), one of the earliest in Islam.
The tower-houses of Old Sanaa are built of stone bases, rammed earth or fired brick walls, and timber lintels, rising six to nine storeys. The exterior decoration is what the city is known for: bands and arabesques of white gypsum plaster picked out around the openings, set against the warm brown of the brick. The upper rooms hold the qamariya, a stained-glass fanlight made of cut alabaster or coloured glass set in a plaster web, that throws coloured light across the diwan at the top of the house. UNESCO inscribed the old city as a World Heritage Site in 1986.
Old Sanaa sits inside a wall pierced historically by seven gates, of which Bab al-Yemen, on the south side, is the most intact and the everyday entry into the souq. The Jami al-Kabir, founded in the 7th century during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, anchors the old quarter near the centre. Sanaa has been a UNESCO site on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 2015 due to the ongoing armed conflict in Yemen, and travel is not generally advised for outside visitors. The city continues to be lived in by some two million people in the wider capital municipality.