Located in the Strait of Hormuz, 8 km (5 mi) off the Iranian coast, the island is part of Hormozgan Province.

Reddish ochre on the island and its beaches, called Golak by natives, has been exploited for artistic and culinary purposes, and also attracts tourists.

[1] The satellite images catching the concentric arrangement of the rocks show that Hormuz Island appears to be a salt diapir, composed of ancient seasalt deposits which, due to lack of salt-dissolving groundwater and rains, and due to their plastic deformabilty, can flow and squeeze just like ice; thus, under the squeezing pressure of other sediments on top, the salt has managed to rise above the surface over many thousands of years, and during that time has been eroded into different shapes.

[3] The island has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports Saunders's terns, great thick-knees, and sooty gulls.

This site yielded a Middle Paleolithic lithic assemblage characterized by Levallois methods and dates back over 40,000 years.

[6] The town's ruler decided to shift his residence to the island around 1300, in order to evade attacks by Mongolian and Turkish groups from the interior.

The island continued to export small quantities of rock salt and lumps of iron oxide, which were used as ballast stones for sailing ships.

The museum also displays works by local indigenous women, bones of sea creatures,[14] and dolls made of recycled materials.