The world's most densely packed island capital — mosques between skyscrapers and the Indian Ocean in every direction
Malé (pronounced mah-LAY) is the capital of the Maldives, one of the most extraordinary urban environments on earth — a 2km × 1km coral island jammed with 130,000 people (one of the world's highest population densities per land area) and surrounded on every side by the Indian Ocean. The skyline of apartment blocks and mosques crammed onto a near-flat island is visible from approaching seaplanes well before landing — a different world from the surrounding chain of 1,200 empty atolls where tourists stay. The Grand Friday Mosque's golden dome, the 17th-century Hukuru Miskiy mosque with its carve…
The Maldives converted to Sunni Islam in 1153 AD under the influence of a North African scholar, abandoning Buddhism (the Hukuru Miskiy mosque was built on the site of the main Buddhist temple and uses its repurposed stones). The Maldives was a Portuguese trading protectorate (1558–1573), then came under Dutch and British influence; it became a British protectorate in 1887 and was fully independent only in 1965. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami devastated many atolls. President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom ruled for 30 years until the country's first multiparty elections in 2008 — the democratic transit…