Accessible travel and limited mobility in Syria

Syria is not an accessible country, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. Kerb ramps are mostly absent, castle entrances are stepped, lifts depend on the electricity, and accessible toilets barely exist. Even so, there are real places you can see in a wheelchair. A trip built on choosing the right places rather than seeing everything works well.

Pavements, ramps and crossing the road

Kerb heights are irregular and pavements are not continuous: cars park on them, stalls block them, generators sit in the middle of them. In practice a wheelchair travels along the edge of the road, and local wheelchair users do the same.

Dropped kerbs are rare and missing at most junctions. Crossings and lights are few, so crossing the road happens with human help. There is nothing awkward about it — someone sees you waiting and comes over.

The newer districts are markedly easier than the old cities. In Shaalan and Abu Rummaneh in Damascus, or Aziziyeh in Aleppo, streets are wide, the surface is asphalt and distances are short by car. Basing yourself there and making selected trips into the old city works better than the other way round.

The ground in the old cities

The old cities of Damascus and Aleppo are paved in stone. Some stretches were levelled during repairs, most were not, and the joints between stones catch a small front castor. Large pneumatic front wheels make a genuine difference here.

The lanes are narrow and vehicles cannot reach most doors. In courtyard houses converted into hotels there are usually one or two steps down from the street into the courtyard, thresholds are high and door leaves are narrow.

The covered souqs, on the other hand, are the easiest part of any old city: a hard surface, flat from end to end, roofed and shaded throughout. That is why the Al-Hamidiyah Souq in Damascus and the Al-Madina Souq in Aleppo head the list. Repairs are still under way in Aleppo and some arms of the souq may be shut; ask before going in.

What is genuinely possible in a wheelchair

What follows means possible, not easy. Each one can still throw up a threshold, a step or a crowd, and none of them guarantees a full circuit without help.

• Al-Hamidiyah Souq, Damascus — flat and covered along its whole length, free to enter. It opens at 09:00 and the first hour is the emptiest; manoeuvring gets hard in the afternoon crowd.
• The courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus — a wide, flat marble courtyard, and the easiest major building to visit. Ask at the entrance how the shoe rule applies to wheels; the threshold may need a hand.
• Tekkiye Suleymaniye, Damascus — free, a flat courtyard and shade under the arcades. It fits into the same half day as the National Museum next door.
• The garden of the National Museum, Damascus — the garden is flat and the sarcophagi and capitals stand outdoors. The halls themselves closed at the end of 2024; ask whether they are open before you go.
• The norias of Hama — the riverside walk is flat and free, and the great wheels are visible from above. Skipping the steps down to water level costs you nothing.
• Mount Qasioun, Damascus — the viewpoints are reached by car and the city is visible without getting out. The ridge is windy and cool in the evening.
• Bab Sharqi to Bab Touma, Damascus — both gates stand at street level and cost nothing. The stretch between them is short, but the squares carry traffic and crossing needs help.

What is hard, and what is not possible

Knowing this in advance beats travelling to a gate and turning back. None of these has a lift or an alternative entrance.

• The Aleppo Citadel — the stepped ramp from the bridge up to the inner gate is long and steep, and the lanes inside are stony and sloped. It cannot be done in a wheelchair; seeing the citadel from around the moat is the alternative.
• Krak des Chevaliers — the vaulted ramp from the entrance climbs steeply and the stone stairs are worn and slippery. Hard going even with a stick or crutches.
• Deir Mar Musa — the final approach is about 350 steps and there is no other route.
• Underground chapels — the Chapel of Saint Ananias in Damascus is reached by a narrow stair with no handrail, and the main part of Umm al-Zunnar in Homs is also below ground with a low ceiling.
• Maaloula and Mar Semaan — the gorge path at Maaloula is stony and sloped, and the ground at Mar Semaan is covered in broken stone. Neither offers a level surface.
• Castles and tells — Saladin’s Castle, Masyaf, Marqab and the citadel mound at Homs all combine a steep climb, a broken surface and no shade.
• Excavation sites and Arwad — the stone ground at Ugarit is uneven, Amrit involves more than a kilometre on foot, and at Palmyra the distances are long and the ground loose. Boarding the boat to Arwad is done by steps, and the island lanes are narrow.

Hotels: the lift, the power and the room

In Syria, knowing that a hotel has a lift tells you very little on its own. Mains power is cut for hours every day and hotels run on generators; in most places the generator carries the lighting and the wifi but not the lift. A hotel with a lift can therefore be a hotel without one for part of the day.

Booking is done by phone anyway, which is an advantage: you can ask directly. Four questions are worth asking — what hours the generator runs, whether the lift is on the generator, how wide the room door is, and whether the bathroom has a bath or a shower. If the answer to the second is no, do not take an upper floor.

Courtyard houses in the old city have no lift at all; rooms sit around the courtyard and on the floor above. In exchange, a ground-floor room usually opens straight onto a courtyard that is flat. Grab rails are almost nowhere to be found, and a folding shower stool is the single most useful thing to bring.

Toilets

Accessible toilets barely exist. Do not count on one in a museum, at a site or in a souq; mosques have ablution rooms, but they are stepped and wet.

Hotels and hotel restaurants are the dependable option. Building the day as loops out from the hotel and back — one district in the morning, another in the afternoon — does more to make the trip work than anything else on this page. Carry your own paper and hand gel; neither is everywhere.

Help, transport and a companion

Tour operators specialising in accessible travel do not exist here in practice. Hiring a car with a driver for the day is the functional answer, and the cost is agreed in advance.

• Ramped vehicles are not common. The chair is folded into the boot; a heavy powered chair becomes a transport problem, a folding manual one does not.
• Asking for help is easy. When someone needs lifting, four people arrive. Tell them where to hold; nobody takes offence, they are waiting to be told.
• Spare parts are not available. Bring inner tubes, a patch kit and the right spanners; hunting for a wheelchair repair costs a day.
• Tell the airline in advance. An airbridge is not available on every flight, so allow for stairs and an ambulift.
• Travel with a companion. In a city with no kerb ramps and a stone surface, a second pair of hands makes every item on this list a step easier.

Sight and hearing

For a blind or partially sighted traveller the street is difficult: no tactile paving, no audible signals, motorbikes on the pavement and stalls that move the walking line every day. A companion is effectively necessary.

There is no single rule about touching objects in museums and at sites; you have to ask the attendant, and the answer varies from place to place. Labels are in Arabic and partly in English, and large print or braille is nowhere.

For a deaf or hard-of-hearing traveller the communication side is easier. Syrian sign language differs from international signing, but writing things down is normal here and having a number written on paper is what everyone does anyway. The difficulty is volume: souqs, generators and traffic are loud, and a day of it is tiring with a hearing aid.

One last note: every item on this page can change. Repairs are under way, entrances move, and a ramp that was not there last month may be there now. Having your hotel phone ahead gives a more current answer than this list does.