By tier

Ultra-Luxury29
Soneva · Aman · Four Seasons
Luxury95
COMO · Anantara · Six Senses
All Resorts204
Browse every Maldives property

By experience

Honeymoon
Overwater villas · candlelit dining
Family Resorts
Kids clubs · shallow lagoons
Adults-Only
Couples & friends · no children
Wellness & Spa
Spa retreats · holistic wellbeing
Surfing
World-class breaks · uncrowded
Diving Resorts
House reefs · PADI centres
Water Villas
Overwater bungalows · ocean access

By value

All-Inclusive
Meals · drinks · activities included
Value Stays
Quality under $400 / night
Budget Stays
From $80 / night
Guesthouses
Local islands · authentic stays

By tier

Ultra-Luxury

Soneva · Aman · Four Seasons

Explore the collection

Browse by Atoll Map Airports Domestic flights Events Compare

View All Insights →

Articles, dispatches & Maldives travel stories.

GuidesDestination tips, island guides & travel planning ResortsIn-depth resort reviews, features & comparisons Agent HubResources for travel agents booking the Maldives NewsNew openings, offers & Maldives travel updates EditorialInspiring stories from the Indian Ocean

Travel Guides52 evergreen pillar guides · 11 languages→

Back to the timeline

The archive

Two and a half thousand years,
artifact by artifact.

103 artifacts · openly licensed · with credit

Maps drawn before the islands had a name, coins that crossed empires, coral mosques, copperplate decrees, a queen’s throne, an underwater cabinet. Every image here is Public Domain or Creative Commons, mirrored from Wikimedia Commons with its source preserved — a small open museum of the Maldives. Filter by chapter, or follow any artifact back to the moment it belongs to.

A page from the Rigveda manuscript MS2097, written in Devanagari script on paper. — One of the oldest surviving Rigveda copies — the hymns that first sketched a Sanskrit name for these islands.
Wikimedia Commons · Unknown scribe · Public Domain

Rigveda palm-leaf folio in Sharada script, recovered from Kashmir. — Palm leaf and iron stylus — the portable technology that carried Vedic geography across the Indian Ocean.
Wikimedia Commons · Ms Sarah Welch · CC0

Mahabharata Drona Parvan folio in Grantha script, Whish manuscript collection, acquired 1836. — The epic that catalogued every sea the Bhārata knew — including, in passing, a thousand scattered isles to the south.
Wikimedia Commons · Ms Sarah Welch · CC BY-SA 4.0

Ortelius's map of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea showing Indian Ocean trade routes. — A later cartographer's reconstruction of the sea-lanes that already tied the Maldives to Arabia and India by the Vedic age.
Wikimedia Commons · Abraham Ortelius · Public Domain

A traditional wooden Maldivian dhoni with a curved prow moored in a turquoise lagoon. — The dhoni, a hull-form little changed for centuries, recalls the small sea-craft on which the islands' first masters of the ocean made their living.
Wikimedia Commons · BadrNaseem · CC BY-SA 2.0

A wooden outrigger canoe with a single balancing float drawn up on the shore at Negombo, Sri Lanka. — The Sri Lankan outrigger, its slender float steadying an open hull, embodies the kind of vessel that carried Indo-Aryan settlers and their language south across the ocean.
Wikimedia Commons · Ji-Elle · CC BY-SA 3.0

Several outrigger fishing canoes resting on the sand at Weligama beach in southern Sri Lanka. — Outrigger craft on a southern Ceylon beach evoke the seafaring tradition of the coasts from which the Maldives' earliest people set out.
Wikimedia Commons · Pierre André Leclercq · CC BY-SA 4.0

Dorsal view of a Cypraea moneta (money cowrie) shell, glossy cream with a ridged opening. — The species itself — small, uniform, nearly indestructible. Nature's answer to the minted coin.
Wikimedia Commons · Eric Polk · CC BY-SA 4.0

19th-century scientific illustration of Cypraea moneta with its mantle partially covering the shell. — The living animal, mantle draped over its shell — harvested alive in Maldivian lagoons and buried in the sand until the flesh rotted away.
Wikimedia Commons · A. H. Cooke, Cambridge Natural History · Public Domain

A handful of polished cowrie shells arranged as historical currency. — By the time the caravans reached Timbuktu, each shell had travelled further than most of the traders who carried it.
Wikimedia Commons · Gary Todd · CC0

1845 engraving of an Arab trader using cowry shells as money in East Africa. — Nineteenth-century European artists watched, with some astonishment, a currency older than coinage still clearing the Swahili coast.
Wikimedia Commons · R. K. Thomas (1845) · Public Domain

Shang-dynasty burial arrangement of cowrie shells used as grave money. — Maldivian shells in a Chinese tomb, 1500 BCE — the earliest physical evidence of a trade network that would outlast every empire touching it.
Wikimedia Commons · Gary Todd · CC0

A 1482 printed map of the island of Taprobane ringed by scattered small islands, from the Ulm edition of Ptolemy's Geographia. — Ptolemy's Taprobane, here in the 1482 Ulm printing, sits amid the swarm of little islands his Geography counted off the coast — the first Mediterranean glimpse of the Maldives.
Wikimedia Commons · Claudius Ptolemy / Donnus Nicolaus Germanus · Public Domain

A hand-coloured 1482 printed world map based on Ptolemy's coordinates, framed by wind-head figures, showing Europe, Africa and Asia around the Indian Ocean. — The Ptolemaic world as printed at Ulm in 1482: an Indian Ocean ringed by land, into which the geographer fitted his '1,378 little islands' off Taprobane.
Wikimedia Commons · after Claudius Ptolemy · Public Domain

A medieval manuscript world map drawn after Ptolemy's Geographia, with a curved grid of latitude lines and wind-heads around the margin. — A manuscript map after Ptolemy's Geographia preserves the second-century scheme by which Greece and Rome first reckoned the islands of the southern ocean.
Wikimedia Commons · after Claudius Ptolemy (Burney MS 111) · Public Domain

A 1922 photograph of the eroded earthen mound of a Buddhist dagaba among palms on Fua Mulaku island in the Maldives. — H. C. P. Bell's 1922 photograph of a ruined dagaba on Fua Mulaku records the coral-and-earth stupas that crowned the atolls through fourteen centuries of Buddhism.
Wikimedia Commons · H. C. P. Bell · Public Domain

An antiquarian drawing of the Buddhist stupa at Kuruhinna on Gan island in Haddhunmathi Atoll, seen from its western side. — An early survey drawing of the Gan stupa in Haddhunmathi Atoll preserves the form of monuments that coral and time have since worn down.
Wikimedia Commons · Mohonu · Public Domain

A marble statue of a bearded man in a pallium and sacerdotal crown, long identified as the Emperor Julian, in the Louvre. — This Louvre marble, long taken for the Emperor Julian, gives a face to the court at which Ammianus recorded 'Divi' envoys from the Maldivian seas in 362.
Wikimedia Commons · Tangopaso · Public Domain

A marble portrait head of a bearded man wearing a diadem, found in Athens and identified by some as the Emperor Julian. — A diademed marble head from Athens, read by some as Julian himself, fixes the imperial presence behind the embassy of the distant islanders.
Wikimedia Commons · George E. Koronaios · CC BY-SA 4.0

A worn silver siliqua coin of Julian the Apostate, struck at Arles, with a wreathed reverse. — A silver coin of Julian, struck at Arles, is the kind of Roman currency that travelled the trade routes — one would later surface in a Maldivian temple at Thoddoo.
Wikimedia Commons · Birmingham Museums Trust · CC BY-SA 2.0

Overview of the Buddhist monastery ruins at Kuruhinna Tharaagandu on Kaashidhoo, Maldives. — The only Buddhist complex the Maldives has ever allowed to survive above ground — and even here, only its foundations.
Wikimedia Commons · CRC43 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Central core of the Kaashidhoo Buddhist monastery showing a coral-stone platform. — The shrine at the heart of the site, once crowned by a dagaba carved from coral quarried on the house reef.
Wikimedia Commons · CRC43 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Site overview of the Kuruhinna Tharaagandu monastic complex from above. — Egil Mikkelsen's 1996–98 Norwegian excavation exposed the full monastic footprint — cells, tank, stupa base, all in coral stone.
Wikimedia Commons · CRC43 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Coral-stone Buddhist ruins on Kaashidhoo island, Maldives. — The rough-cut blocks are the Maldives' own idiom — coral was the only stone the islands produced, and it built every temple they ever had.
Wikimedia Commons · A. Robustus · CC BY-SA 3.0

Ruwanwelisaya stupa at Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, a reference for Maldivian Buddhist architecture. — Across the strait at Anuradhapura, the same Theravada tradition built in brick and lime what Kaashidhoo built in coral.
Wikimedia Commons · Philip Nalangan · CC BY 4.0

A handscroll painting attributed to Tang court painter Yan Liben showing a procession of foreign envoys carrying tribute goods. — Yan Liben's scroll of foreign tribute-bearers pictures exactly the spectacle a Maldivian embassy would have joined before the Tang throne at Chang'an.
Wikimedia Commons · Yan Liben · Public Domain

A traditional painted portrait of a Tang dynasty emperor in imperial robes, identified as Emperor Taizong of Tang. — The Tang imperial house, whose court received envoys from across the southern seas, presided over the maritime trade that drew islanders to Chang'an.
Wikimedia Commons · Public Domain

Glazed three-colour Tang dynasty pottery figures of laden camels, of the kind made as tomb goods. — Tang sancai trade-camels, modelled in glazed earthenware, embody the cosmopolitan commerce — by land and by sea — that bound the empire to distant tributaries.
Wikimedia Commons · Gary Todd · CC0

The coral-stone Old Friday Mosque (Hukuru Miskiy) in Malé, its walls built from carved coral blocks under a tiered roof. — The Hukuru Miskiy in Malé, raised in coral stone — the enduring monument of an island nation that took Islam as the centre of its identity.
Wikimedia Commons · Zairon · CC BY-SA 4.0

A round white coral tower standing beside the Old Friday Mosque in Malé, with a later minaret down the street. — The squat coral minaret-tower beside the Old Friday Mosque, where for centuries the call to prayer summoned a converted kingdom.
Wikimedia Commons · David Stanley · CC BY 2.0

The Medhu Ziyaaraiy shrine in Malé photographed in 1958, a small whitewashed tomb building with an arched doorway. — The Medhu Ziyaaraiy, traditional shrine of Abu al-Barakat — the scholar whose arrival in 1153 turned a king, and a nation, toward Islam.
Wikimedia Commons · Public Domain

The first copper plate of the Dhanbidhoo Loamaafaanu, incised with rows of old Maldivian script. — The opening plate of the Dhanbidhoo Loamaafaanu, where twelfth-century decree was driven line by line into copper — Islamic law made permanent in metal.
Wikimedia Commons · R. Michael Feener · CC BY-SA 4.0

A drawn chart of the Dhives Akuru alphabet, the old Maldivian script with its rounded consonant forms. — The Dhives Akuru, the ancient round letters in which the copperplate decrees were cut before Thaana was ever conceived.
Wikimedia Commons · Xavier Romero-Frias · Public Domain

A gallery inside the National Museum in Malé displaying cases of historical Maldivian artefacts. — The National Museum in Malé, keeper of the copperplate decrees and the relics of a kingdom remaking itself in stone, script and metal.
Wikimedia Commons · Zairon · CC BY-SA 4.0

Léon Benett engraving of Ibn Battuta riding through Egypt, from Jules Verne's 1878 Découverte de la terre. — The Moroccan judge at thirty — five years out from Tangier, another fifteen to go before he reached the Maldives.
Wikimedia Commons · Léon Benett, 1878 · Public Domain

Bronze bust of Ibn Battuta at the Ibn Battuta Museum in Tangier, Morocco. — Tangier still claims him. His tomb is a short walk from this bust inside the museum bearing his name.
Wikimedia Commons · Ideophagous · CC BY-SA 4.0

Folio from a 14th-century manuscript of the Rihla, transcribed by Ibn Juzayy, held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. — The Rihla survives because a Granadan scribe named Ibn Juzayy wrote it down — the Maldives pages among them.
Wikimedia Commons · Bibliothèque nationale de France · CC BY-SA 4.0

Map plotting the three great journeys of Ibn Battuta across Africa, Asia, and Europe, with routes annotated in Arabic. — Seventy-five thousand miles in total. The Maldives detour sits in the Indian Ocean, roughly halfway through.
Wikimedia Commons · Michel Bakni · CC BY-SA 4.0

Qur'an folio in Maghribi script, c. 1250–1350 CE, held at the Library of Congress. — The cursive Maghribi hand Ibn Battuta would have read — and the script in which he issued his Maldivian judgments.
Wikimedia Commons · Library of Congress · Public Domain

A carved wooden royal throne, the King's Seat, displayed in the National Museum in Malé. — The royal seat of the Maldive sultanate — the kind of throne Rehendhi Khadijah held, and twice took back, across half a century of rule.
Wikimedia Commons · Zairon · CC BY-SA 4.0

An ornate royal table from the Maldivian court, on display in the National Museum in Malé. — Furnishings of the Malé court preserved in the National Museum — the material world of a sultanate ruled, for thirty years, by a queen.
Wikimedia Commons · Zairon · CC BY-SA 4.0

The minaret of the Friday Mosque rising over unpaved sand streets in Malé in 1981. — Old Malé before its streets were paved — the close, sandy island capital from which Khadijah's matriarchal court governed the atolls.
Wikimedia Commons · Xavier Romero-Frias · CC BY-SA 3.0

Sixteenth-century oil painting of Portuguese carracks at anchor off a rocky coast, circle of Joachim Patinir, c. 1540. — The ships that ran the Cape route — and, for fifteen years, Malé's harbour.
Wikimedia Commons · Circle of Joachim Patinir, c. 1540 · Royal Museums Greenwich · Public Domain

Portrait of Vasco da Gama by Gregório Lopes, c. 1524, painted the year da Gama died in Cochin. — The admiral who opened the ocean road. His grandson Pedro commanded the reprisal fleet after Malé fell in 1573.
Wikimedia Commons · Gregório Lopes, c. 1524 · Public Domain

Detail of a Portuguese nau from the Retábulo de Santa Auta, c. 1520 — a close study of an ocean-going carrack. — High stern castle, lateen mizzen, cannon at the waterline — a floating fortress, and a floating prison.
Wikimedia Commons · Anonymous, c. 1520 · CC0

Folio from D. João de Castro's 1540 route map of the Red Sea, showing Portuguese naval vessels in formation. — Estado da Índia in its own hand — the tactical diagrams Lisbon used to run a ten-thousand-mile empire.
Wikimedia Commons · D. João de Castro, 1540 · Public Domain

Utheemu Ganduvaru, the wooden ancestral palace of Muhammad Thakurufaanu on Utheemu island in Haa Alifu Atoll. — The coral-and-timber house where the plot was drawn. Still standing, and still pointing south toward Malé.
Wikimedia Commons · Andreas Faessler, 2014 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Interior view of Utheemu Ganduvaru showing the carved wooden rooms preserved from the sixteenth century. — Low doorways, lacquered chests, a swing for the chief's wife — the domestic scale of a national founding.
Wikimedia Commons · Andreas Faessler, 2014 · CC BY-SA 4.0

The mosque on Utheemu island, a short walk from the Thakurufaanu palace. — Thakurufaanu drew his guerrillas from this congregation. The original coral mosque has since been rebuilt.
Wikimedia Commons · Andreas Faessler, 2014 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Period tombstones in the old cemetery at Utheemu, carved in coral stone with Thaana inscriptions. — The names that went with him on the raid. Many never came back.
Wikimedia Commons · Andreas Faessler, 2014 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Hukuru Miskiy, the Old Friday Mosque in Malé, built of coral stone in 1656 after the liberation. — Rebuilt a lifetime after liberation on the site Thakurufaanu reclaimed — the oldest mosque still in use in Malé.
Wikimedia Commons · David Stanley · CC BY 2.0

A table of the Thaana alphabet showing each letter with its consonant and vowel diacritic forms. — The Thaana alphabet laid out in full — its first nine consonants shaped from Arabic and Persian numerals, read from right to left.
Wikimedia Commons · Mohonu · Public Domain

A signboard written in Dhivehi using the Thaana script at the presidential palace in Malé. — Thaana in daily public use — a Dhivehi plaque at Malé's presidential residence, the living afterlife of an eighteenth-century invention.
Wikimedia Commons · J. Ollé · CC BY-SA 3.0

A chart of the Dhivehi Akuru, the older Maldivian script that preceded Thaana, showing its rounded letterforms. — The Dhivehi Akuru that Thaana replaced — the script the Maldives left behind when it wrote its new right-to-left alphabet into being.
Wikimedia Commons · Sarafoas · CC0

An 1886 engraving showing the harbour at Malé with the old fort bastion above the waterfront. — Malé harbour as engraved for The Graphic in 1886, the year before the sultanate placed itself under British protection.
Wikimedia Commons · The Graphic (1886) · Public Domain

An 1886 printed portrait of E. A. Abrahim Deedee, identified as Prime Minister of the Maldives. — A Maldivian statesman of the 1880s, drawn during a European visit in the reign that would soon sign the protectorate agreement.
Wikimedia Commons · The Graphic (1886) · Public Domain

A 1909 postage stamp inscribed 'Maldive Islands'. — A 1909 postage stamp of the Maldive Islands, issued in the early decades of the British protectorate.
Wikimedia Commons · Public Domain

HMS Warspite under way in the Indian Ocean, 1942, as flagship of the British Eastern Fleet — The battleship that used Addu Atoll as its secret anchorage — flagship of Admiral Somerville's Eastern Fleet.
Wikimedia Commons · Lt D. C. Oulds, Royal Navy official photographer · Public Domain

Two RAF Consolidated Catalina Mark I flying boats of No. 205 Squadron in flight, 1941 — Catalinas like these flew the long Indian Ocean patrols that Port T's sheltered lagoon was built to support.
Wikimedia Commons · Royal Air Force official photographer · Public Domain

A Supermarine Walrus amphibian being hoisted aboard HMS Warspite after an Indian Ocean patrol — Routine reconnaissance off the fleet's flagship — the daily rhythm of the hidden Eastern Fleet.
Wikimedia Commons · Lt D. C. Oulds, Royal Navy official photographer · Public Domain

Declassified CIA map of Addu Atoll in the southern Maldives showing Gan and the adjacent islands — The geography that made Port T — a ring of reef islands sealing a natural deep-water harbour.
Wikimedia Commons · CIA Indian Ocean Atlas · Public Domain

A Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat of the kind that patrolled the Indian Ocean and China Seas for the RAF — Identical to the Catalinas based at Gan, these American-built patrol boats extended British reach across 3,000 miles of empty ocean.
Wikimedia Commons · National Museum of the U.S. Navy · Public Domain

The coat of arms of the United Suvadive Republic. — The state emblem adopted by the United Suvadive Republic during its brief existence from 1959 to 1963.
Wikimedia Commons · Samhanin · CC BY 4.0

A map of Gan Island within Addu Atoll in the southern Maldives. — Gan Island in Addu Atoll, home of the British base whose presence underpinned, then ended, the Suvadive secession.
Wikimedia Commons · Public Domain

A photograph of Prime Minister Ibrahim Nasir signing the independence agreement with Britain. — Prime Minister Ibrahim Nasir signs the agreement of 26 July 1965 that ended seventy-eight years of British protection.
Wikimedia Commons · Public Domain

The national flag of the Maldives: a white crescent on a green panel within a red field. — The flag of the sovereign Maldives, raised as the nation became the 117th member of the United Nations.
Wikimedia Commons · Public Domain

A formal portrait of Ibrahim Nasir, President of the Maldives. — Ibrahim Nasir, who became the first president of the Second Republic after the 1968 referendum abolished the sultanate.
Wikimedia Commons · President's Office of the Maldives · CC BY 4.0

Republic Square in Malé, an open civic plaza with a large national flag. — Republic Square in Malé, the ceremonial heart of the republic declared in 1968.
Wikimedia Commons · Sergei Gussev · CC BY 2.0

Kurumba Maldives resort island seen from the lagoon — The first tourist resort in the Maldives, opened in 1972 by Italian operator George Corbin with thirty simple rooms.
Wikimedia Commons · DD from Male, Maldives · CC BY-SA 2.0

Aerial view of Kurumba Island, a small palm-fringed coral cay in North Malé Atoll — A cay barely 700 metres long — the template for every resort island that followed.
Wikimedia Commons · PalawanOz · Public Domain

A traditional Maldivian dhoni, a wooden sailing boat with curved prow, moored off a palm-fringed beach — The hand-built wooden dhoni ferried Corbin's first Italian guests from Malé — the only way to reach a resort in 1972.
Wikimedia Commons · BadrNaseem · CC BY-SA 2.0

The northern beachfront of Malé, the Maldivian capital, a working waterfront lined with boats — Malé's waterfront — the commercial artery through which early tourism arrived, decades before an international airport.
Wikimedia Commons · Xavier Romero-Frias · CC BY 3.0

A Maldivian dhoni used for inter-island transport, under way on calm inner-atoll water — Eight miles an hour between islands — the slow, sea-level tempo of a Maldives holiday in its first decades.
Wikimedia Commons · Nattu from Malé, Maldives · CC BY 2.0

A 2003 portrait of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom of the Maldives. — Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, two decades into the thirty-year presidency that began in 1978 and oversaw the rise of resort tourism.
Wikimedia Commons · President's Office · CC BY 4.0

A 1980s presidential portrait of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. — Gayoom in the 1980s, early in the thirty-year presidency that began in 1978.
Wikimedia Commons · Public Domain

A 1970s photograph of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom seated beside Mohamed Zahir Hussain. — Gayoom (right) in the 1970s — the Cairo-educated scholar on the eve of his rise to the presidency.
Wikimedia Commons · Public Domain

A portrait photograph of Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl. — Thor Heyerdahl, the Kon-Tiki voyager whose 1982–1984 fieldwork pressed the Maldives to reckon with the ruins beneath its mosques.
Wikimedia Commons · Kon-Tiki Museet · CC BY 3.0

A historic carved Buddha head from the Maldives, displayed in the Sri Lanka National Museum in Colombo. — A Maldivian Buddha head, now in Colombo — a relic of the Buddhist centuries Heyerdahl insisted had themselves been laid over a still older island faith.
Wikimedia Commons · Kanatonian · CC BY-SA 3.0

An Indian Air Force Ilyushin Il-76 heavy transport aircraft on a runway. — An Indian Air Force Ilyushin Il-76 — the type that flew paratroopers across the Arabian Sea to Hulhulé on the night of 3 November 1988 (shown in later service).
Wikimedia Commons · Public Domain

A dense view of Malé, the island capital of the Maldives, packed with buildings to the waterline. — Malé, the crowded island capital that mercenaries seized at dawn and Indian forces had recovered by sunset.
Wikimedia Commons · Nattu · CC BY 2.0

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami wave crossing the harbour at Malé, Maldives on 26 December 2004 — The moment the ocean entered the capital — photographed from a Malé rooftop as the wave crossed the seawall.
Wikimedia Commons · Sofwathulla Mohamed · Public Domain

Maldivian officials observe a minute of silence at the annual tsunami memorial ceremony — Every 26 December, Malé stops for one minute — a civic ritual the country has kept for two decades.
Wikimedia Commons · The President's Office, Maldives · CC BY 4.0

Wreath-laying at the tsunami memorial in Malé on the anniversary of the 2004 disaster — Eighty-two Maldivians died; another twenty-six remain missing. The memorial names them one by one.
Wikimedia Commons · The President's Office, Maldives · CC BY 4.0

The concrete northern sea wall at Malé, a tetrapod breakwater surrounding the capital island — The Japanese-built sea wall — begun after earlier storm damage and almost certainly the reason Malé's toll was not far higher.
Wikimedia Commons · DD from Male, Maldives · CC BY-SA 2.0

A December 2008 photograph of Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives. — Mohamed Nasheed, photographed weeks after his December 2008 inauguration as the first freely elected president of the Maldives.
Wikimedia Commons · Voice of America · Public Domain

A portrait of Maldivian politician Mohamed Nasheed. — Nasheed, the former political prisoner whose 2008 victory closed thirty years of single-party rule.
Wikimedia Commons · UNDP · CC BY 2.0

President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet ministers in scuba gear seated at a horseshoe table on the sea floor — 17 October 2009 — ministers signed a declaration calling for global carbon cuts while breathing from tanks six metres down.
Wikimedia Commons · The President's Office, Maldives · CC BY 4.0

Second angle on the Maldives underwater cabinet meeting, ministers in wetsuits around a submerged table — The dive doubled as a press image designed to be un-ignorable by the world's wire services.
Wikimedia Commons · Max Milas · CC BY-SA 4.0

President Mohamed Nasheed filming a UN climate-change public service commercial — Part of the same 2009 campaign — the UN's 'Seal the Deal' push toward the Copenhagen summit.
Wikimedia Commons · The President's Office, Maldives / Mauroof Khaleel · CC BY 4.0

President Nasheed at a reception with Barack and Michelle Obama during the UN climate talks — Nasheed worked every room he could reach — the Maldives had barely two months before the Copenhagen deadline.
Wikimedia Commons · Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson · Public Domain

Bleached and dead coral on a reef at Moofushi in Alifu Dhaalu Atoll, Maldives — The stakes in one image — eight years after the 1998 El Niño, this stretch of Moofushi reef still had almost no living coral.
Wikimedia Commons · Bruno de Giusti · CC BY-SA 2.5 IT

An aerial view of the Sinamalé Bridge spanning the sea between Malé and Hulhulé Island. — The Sinamalé Bridge, the China-financed span linking Malé to the airport island — concrete proof of the Maldives' tilt toward Beijing.
Wikimedia Commons · Panda 51 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Fireworks light the sky over the Sinamalé Bridge at its 2018 opening ceremony. — Fireworks crown the 2018 opening of the bridge — the high-water mark of the pivot to China.
Wikimedia Commons · President's Office · CC BY 4.0

An official 2018 portrait of Maldivian President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. — Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, whose 2018 election swung the pendulum back toward New Delhi and an 'India First' foreign policy.
Wikimedia Commons · President's Office of the Maldives · CC BY 4.0

A cluster of cultivated branching corals growing on the seabed in shallow water beside a Maldivian island. — A guest-sponsored coral garden off the island of Baros, photographed six months after the fragments were planted out.
Wikimedia Commons · Pittigrilli · CC BY-SA 4.0

A dense colony of Acropora millepora coral with fine branching polyps photographed underwater. — An Acropora millepora colony in Baa Atoll — the fast-growing, easily fragmented genus on which most Maldivian reef restoration depends.
Wikimedia Commons · MDC Seamarc Maldives · CC BY-SA 4.0

A broad table-shaped Acropora cytherea coral colony on a reef in the Maldives. — A mature table coral in the Maldives — the kind of structure a single replanted fragment may take years to rebuild.
Wikimedia Commons · Christian Jensen · CC BY 2.0

A satellite image showing a rectangular reclaimed island rising from a reef flat in the Maldives. — A Landsat view of Hulhumalé, the new island dredged from a reef flat to lift land above a rising sea.
Wikimedia Commons · NASA / USGS Landsat · Public Domain

Rows of mid-rise apartment blocks under a bright sky in the planned city of Hulhumalé. — Planned apartment blocks on Hulhumalé, the engineered city intended to house a third of the nation's people.
Wikimedia Commons · Adam Jones · CC BY-SA 2.0

An aerial photograph of Hulhumalé taken from an aircraft, showing the flat reclaimed island ringed by ocean. — Hulhumalé seen from the air — a two-metre-high plane of reclaimed coral sand set against the open Indian Ocean.
Wikimedia Commons · Zairon · CC BY-SA 4.0

An aerial photograph of Malé, a small island densely packed edge-to-edge with buildings and surrounded by sea. — Malé, the capital — an entire city pressed onto one low island, every metre of it within reach of the ocean.
Wikimedia Commons · Shahee Ilyas · CC BY-SA 3.0

A concrete breakwater along the western shore of Malé, with the dense city skyline rising behind it. — The western breakwater of Malé, where one of the world's most densely settled cities meets the sea at little more than a metre's elevation.
Wikimedia Commons · Mark Fischer · CC BY-SA 2.0

Interlocking concrete tetrapods stacked along the coastal defences of Malé. — Concrete tetrapods armouring the edge of Malé — the hard line of coastal defence against a rising Indian Ocean.
Wikimedia Commons · StromBer · CC BY-SA 3.0

The islands behind every one of these pictures are still here.

Read the full timeline

Stay ahead in Maldives travel.

New openings, trade offers, and market intel — straight to your inbox.

The Maldives DMC trusted by tour operators and travel agents across 40+ source markets.

2006Established

180+Resort partners

40+Source markets

Direct contact

Follow along

All resorts Browse atolls Interactive map 360° tours Compare resorts Luxury resorts Overwater villas Honeymoon Family resorts Dive sites Marine life Sri Lanka

Plan your stay

All resorts Browse atolls Interactive map 360° tours Compare resorts Luxury resorts Overwater villas Honeymoon Family resorts Dive sites Marine life Sri Lanka

Agent pricing Register as agent B2B portal Contact sales Investment guide Maldives DMC services Special offers Islands for lease

Trade

Agent pricing Register as agent B2B portal Contact sales Investment guide Maldives DMC services Special offers Islands for lease

About Insights Events Awards What's on Maldives history All guides →Luxury travel agency

Company

About Insights Events Awards What's on Maldives history All guides →Luxury travel agency

For the trade

Direct resort contracts and on-the-ground expertise — apply once for full access.

Partner with us

Feed paused

Travel Pulse

Live domestic hops from Velana, with atoll context.

12:59MVT

View live board

Getting there

Flight times Airports Domestic flights

© 2026 Resortlife Maldives