Madaya

North-west of Damascus, on the slope of the Eastern Lebanon range, a town looks down over the Zabadani plain. It lies 45 kilometres from Damascus and 5 from the district centre. With Zabadani and Bloudan it counted as one of the three summer towns of the Barada basin; the altitude keeps the summers cool, and that is what brought people up from Damascus.

Getting there

From Damascus by the Zabadani road; the town sits on the slope that rises from the western edge of the plain. Bloudan is at the other end of the same ridge, a short run away.

How long it takes

Two hours for the centre, the market street and the edge of the orchards.

What to see

The town lives off its orchards: apples, cherries, peaches, plums and pears. The Barada runs through it and several springs supply its water — Kawthar, Maysa, Ain al-Haddad, Ain Salih. The market in the centre runs for 600 metres. Because the Lebanese border is close, imported goods that were hard to find elsewhere were long sold here, and buyers came up from Damascus for them.

What not to miss

The level the orchards sit at. Madaya was not built on the floor of the Zabadani plain but on the slope at its edge, and the orchards step down towards the flat. From the upper streets the whole plain opens at once. Why the settlement went here rather than down there is answered by that view and by the height at which the water comes out of the ground.

Recent history

The town was under siege from July 2015 until April 2017. Mines were laid around its edge, forces were placed at the entrances and civilians could not go in or out; together with people from nearby Baqin, Zabadani and Bloudan, more than twenty thousand were held in a small area. Food prices went beyond reach, and early in 2016 Médecins Sans Frontières recorded deaths from starvation. The siege was lifted in 2017 under the arrangement known as the four-towns agreement. This is part of the town’s story, and nobody should come here without knowing its last decade.

Where it stands now

The siege ended, but the present state of the town’s accommodation and services cannot be confirmed from independent sources. There is no verified source that says it works again as a summer town. Ask locally before setting out.