Muscat hotels collection

Muscat has its back to an old ocean floor: the dark mountains that hem it in were lifted and thrust onto Arabia, and geologists call the rock ophiolite. The city slips in between their folds, low and white. On either side of the cove, the Portuguese forts of Jalali and Mirani hold the entrance to the harbour. On the cliffs around the anchorage, the crews of visiting ships took to painting their vessels' names, and the rock still carries them.