Failaka Island

An island in Kuwait Bay approximately 20 kilometres from the mainland, Failaka was continuously inhabited from the Bronze Age Dilmun civilisation through the Hellenistic period — when Alexander the Great established a garrison here — to the mid-twentieth century. The Hellenistic temple precinct and Bronze Age settlement mounds have been partially excavated. The island was evacuated during the 1990 Iraqi invasion and many of its twentieth-century structures remain abandoned, creating a distinctive ghost-town landscape alongside the ancient archaeological sites.