🇸🇴 Somalia
Mogadishu
Mogadishu — "Xamar" in Somali — is one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, a former Arab trading hub on the East African coast that was visited by Ibn Battuta in 1331 and became the centre of the Ajuran Sultanate's hydraulic civilisation. The city's colonial layers include a Portuguese-influenced period (they briefly held it in 1499) and Italian Mogadiscio (1889–1941), which left a legacy of art-deco buildings and espresso culture that persists to this day. After the civil war that began in 1991 and made Mogadishu a byword for urban warfare, the city has been progressively stabilising since the African Union Mission (AMISOM) operations from 2011 onwards. Visitors who come to Mogadishu today find a city rebuilding at remarkable speed — the Lido Beach corniche is lined with restaurants, the historic Hamar Weyne quarter has surviving Ottoman-era coral-stone architecture, and the Bakaara market hums with commerce. Travel remains challenging and requires specialist security advice, but journalists, NGO workers and a small number of adventurous travellers now visit Mogadishu, drawn by its extraordinary coastline, its intensely hospitable people and its status as one of the world's most unlikely comeback stories.