Saint Joseph’s Cathedral, Aleppo

The Chaldean Catholic cathedral of Aleppo stands in the Sulaymaniyah quarter, right beside the Tawhid Mosque. It opened in 1972 and has been the seat of the city’s Chaldean bishopric ever since. It sits at one end of Aleppo’s church architecture: nothing as old as the stone courtyards of Jdeydeh, but a front you remember after a single look — two crenellated towers, a tall window between them, a low dome behind.

Getting there

On the line between Sulaymaniyah and Aziziyah. The easiest landmark is the Tawhid Mosque: its minarets stand 100 metres to the south-west, and the two buildings line up in one view from the same street. The Cathedral of Elijah the Prophet is 200 metres north, so the two fit into one walk.

What to see

The front is pale Aleppo limestone. Two square towers step forward, crenellated on top and pierced by narrow vertical slits. Between them is a tall window in three lights, and above it a marble band written in Syriac. A second band runs over the entrance in Arabic: “We saw his star in the East and have come to worship him” — Matthew 2:2, the words of the wise men who came from the east. The dome stays behind the front, and its cross shows only from the far pavement. The entrance rises on a few steps behind an iron fence; the bishopric shares the same block.

The church of 1886

The Chaldeans of Aleppo had an earlier church in the Aziziyah quarter, large and richly decorated. It was built in 1886, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, and had a wide hall attached to it. The Chaldean bishopric of Aleppo was created in 1957, fifteen years later the present church opened in Sulaymaniyah, and the old building was pulled down. Nothing of it is left in Aziziyah today. Antoine Audo, a Jesuit, took the see in 1992 and stayed in Aleppo through the war years, running the relief work through Caritas Syria.

What most people miss

The two bands of writing on the front. The letters of the upper one are Syriac, the liturgical language of the Chaldean Church; the lower band carries Matthew 2:2 in Arabic. Few facades in Aleppo put two alphabets side by side.