The Holy Saviour and Saint Barbara Church, Aleppo

On the north side of Sulaymaniyah Street, on the line between the Cathedral of Saint Ephrem and the Martyrs’ Church. It is one of the six parishes of the Armenian Catholic eparchy of Aleppo and is dedicated to Saint Barbara. Not a cathedral but a parish church, and one of the links that explain how Sulaymaniyah came together in the 20th century.

Getting there

Walk along Sulaymaniyah Street. The Cathedral of Saint Ephrem and the Martyrs’ Church are on the same line, and the three fit into one walk. The school of the Salesian fathers stands immediately to the west.

How long it takes

Twenty-five minutes. A single-hall church: five minutes for the front, twenty for the inside.

What to see

A small Jesuit chapel stood on the site first. The present church was founded on the same spot in 1937, and the stone front was added six years later, in 1943. For six years, in other words, the church worked without a face, then acquired one. The front is plain: a flat block of stone, a tall arched window on the left, a roof cross above the central pediment, a wooden door at the entrance with a lamp on either side.

Don’t miss

The plainness of the front itself. The churches of Jdeideh carry two-toned stone, muqarnas and belfries; here there is none of that. The difference is not one of taste but of date: the buildings in Jdeideh grew inside the Ottoman city, while this one was born in the middle of a quarter laid out in the twentieth century.

How it stands now

The church was restored in 1999 and continues to work as a parish church. The Holy Cross and Holy Trinity churches on this site, along with the Armenian Catholic Cathedral, belong to the same eparchy; taken together the four map the community across the city.