Bab Qinnasrin

This is the gate you enter Aleppo by from the south. It is named after where the road went: the route out of it ran to Qinnasrin, the ancient town southwest of the city. The gate is still in place, and it is still the natural mouth of the old city on this side.

Getting there

Walk north from the gate and you join the souq line: it is about 1 kilometre to the Great Mosque, 15 minutes on foot. Bab Antakiya, the western gate, is about 900 metres to the northwest, so the two gates can be combined in one walk.

What to see

The gate is a deep, pointed-arch passage flanked by heavy blocks of stone. The inside of the passage is noticeably darker and cooler than the street. The alternating courses of light and dark stone on the right-hand flank are the most striking detail of the facade; the larger blocks in the lower courses are older.

The doors from Amorium

The real story of this gate is not in its stone but in its doors. When Caliph al-Mu’tasim took Amorium in 838, he carried off the city’s gate doors as spoils. They went up at the entrance of his palace in Samarra. Towards the end of the 9th century they moved on to Raqqa, and when Sayf al-Dawla built this gate in 964 he took them from Raqqa and hung them here. Standing in the passage, you are looking at the last stop of a pair of doors that travelled through three cities.

Take care

What you see today survives from the rebuilding of 1256. The gate and the streets around it were badly damaged in the war. Repair work is ongoing. Which lane is open changes, so ask before you go in.