Why it looks like this

Mogadishu was a wealthy medieval trading city, exporting gold and cloth across the Indian Ocean; its two ancient quarters, Hamar Weyne and Shangani, kept their coral-stone lanes by the shore through every later era.

Italian colonial rule added a European-style centre of avenues and arcades in the early 20th century, and independent Somalia's capital grew along the coast. Decades of civil war damaged much of that fabric, but the map still reads in layers: medieval stone core, colonial grid, and the sprawling districts of a recovering metropolis.