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Moises Saman

A boy stands in front of a pile of rubble backdropped by Sana’a on July 7, 2021. In inscribing the old city, UNESCO noted its distinctive architectural character, most notably expressed in multistory buildings decorated with geometric patterns.

Ibrahim Al-Hadi, director of the National Museum in Sana’a, Yemen, gazes out a museum window on July 8, 2021, after it was damaged during the country’s civil war. The museum is located in the historic city center, a World Heritage site since 1986.

Known for its architecturally distinct buildings, Sana’a, Yemen, has been on UNESCO’s World Heritage list since 1986. But a civil war that began in 2014 has damaged landmarks throughout the historic city.

Taking respite from Yemen’s protracted civil war, men and children dance to the beat of drums at the Al Taweel family wedding in the streets of Sanaa’s Old City in July 2021.

A man wends through the narrow alleyways of the capital’s Old City. Its distinctive architectural character, featuring multistory, mud-brick buildings decorated with ornate geometric patterns, won it recognition as a World Heritage site in 1986.

Mjaheed Adeeb, employed by UNESCO to refurbish buildings in the city of Shibam in the eastern governorate of Hadramawt, lifts handfuls of raw material: mud. The World Heritage site boasts towering earthen structures, earning it the moniker “Manhattan of the Desert.”

Malik Ali Najib, a third-generation master builder of traditional Yemeni homes, inspects a renovation in Sanaa’s Old City. The modern capital remains an occupied political prize and a target of air strikes; however, a two-month cease-fire that began this past April was extended for a further two months in June, in the hope that political talks might end the war.

A map of Yemen hangs in the malnutrition ward at Al Sabeen maternity hospital. More than two million children in Yemen under the age of five require treatment for acute malnutrition.

Badradeen Saleh, 45 days old, suffers in the cholera ward at Sanaa’s Al Sabeen maternity hospital. The ongoing cholera outbreak in Yemen, which began in 2016, is the worst ever recorded, with more than 2.5 million cases and 4,000 deaths in the country.

Lintels inscribed with the ancient Musnad script used by kingdoms in the first millennium B.C. in southern Arabia fill a storage room at the National Museum of Yemen in Sanaa. The museum has been closed since 2013 because of war. The Musnad script eventually led to modern-day Arabic script.