The Volcanic Crater City — the ancient port where a 3-million-year-old extinct volcano cradles one of the world's finest natural harbours, the British Empire's most important coal station once refuelled the world's ships, and the Tanks of the Queen of Sheba — 53 massive cisterns carved from volcanic rock — still catch rain on the crater slopes
Aden is Yemen's main port city and former capital, built inside and around an extinct volcanic crater at the mouth of the Red Sea — one of the most geologically dramatic urban settings in the world. The harbour is a collapsed volcanic caldera that forms a near-perfect natural port; the crater rim reaches 550 m at its highest point and the city sits in the crater bowl and on the surrounding volcanic headlands. The Tanks of the Queen of Sheba (Al-Tawilah Cisterns) — 53 rock-cut reservoirs carved from the crater walls, dating from possibly the 6th century BCE — collected and stored rainwater for…
Aden's harbour has been used by traders since at least the 1st century BCE — the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (a 1st-century CE Greek merchant manual) describes it as a significant Arabian port. The cisterns may date from the Himyarite Kingdom (110 BCE–520 CE). The city was contested by the Ottoman Empire and Portuguese in the 16th century; the Ottomans held it intermittently from 1538 to 1630. The British East India Company seized Aden in 1839 — the first British territory in Asia acquired by force — specifically to suppress piracy and use as a coaling station on the India route. After the…