The Walls of Damascus

The eight gates of Damascus are visited one by one; what joins them is the wall itself. It encircles the old city in a rectangle of roughly 1500 by 750 metres, holding about 100 hectares. The grid of streets inside survives from the Roman fabric, so the boundary the wall draws also holds the plan of the city.

How the gates are counted

The Roman wall had seven gates: Bab al-Salam, Bab Sharqi, Bab Touma, Bab al-Faradis, Bab al-Jabiya, Bab al-Saghir and Bab Kisan. Bab al-Faraj, added in the Islamic period, is the eighth. The eight are not in the same condition. Some now work as market arches, others stand free.

How to read the stone

The most instructive thing about the wall is its courses. The large blocks at the bottom are reused from the older wall that predates the 12th century; the courses above them are from the time of Nur al-Din Zangi; the undressed blocks at the very top are Ottoman. You can stand at one stretch of wall and see three periods in a single frame, and all you have to do is look up.

Where to walk it

In the north the line follows the bed of the Barada. Between the citadel and Bab al-Jabiya the passage called Bayn al-Surayn, between the two walls, can still be walked; its name comes from the gap left between two parallel walls. Two towers on the wall matter: Burj Nur al-Din and Burj al-Salih Ayyub. Burj Nur al-Din stands at the southwest of the line, south of the Sinan Pasha Mosque, and is 10 metres high.

What most people miss

Look at the houses built on top of the wall. Along the southeastern stretch there are dwellings sitting directly on the stone courses: small windows cut into the wall at the lower level, and above them an overhanging upper storey on wooden beams. Here the wall is not a museum piece but a wall. The city did not abandon it; it sat down on it.