Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
813 Places
Khan al-Sabil Caravanserai
Khan al-Sabil, a Mamluk caravanserai on the old Aleppo-Damascus road beside today’s M5 highway, was founded in 1371; the village around it took its name.
Idlib · Mamluk
Dederiyeh Cave, Where a Neanderthal Child Was Buried
In 1993 a cave near Afrin gave up the deliberately buried skeleton of a two-year-old Neanderthal child. The chamber runs 60 metres deep; the dig was wrecked in 2012.
Aleppo · Middle Palaeolithic; Yabrudian, Mousterian and Natufian layers
The Tetrastyle Roman Tomb at Dana (North)
A 2nd-century Roman tomb in northern Dana, Idlib: four Ionic columns under a pyramid roof, one of the best-preserved Roman tomb canopies standing in the region.
Idlib · Roman
Jebel Aruda, an Uruk Settlement on the Euphrates
A late 4th-millennium BC Uruk settlement on a ridge above Lake Assad: an 80 by 70 metre temple terrace, the Red and Grey temples, 13 numerical tablets and lapis.
Raqqa · Late Chalcolithic, Uruk V (radiocarbon 3335–2916 BC)
The Afrin River
A 131 km tributary of the Orontes that rises in Turkey and splits Afrin town in two. Assyrians called it Apre, Romans Ufrenus; Ain Dara and Jindires line its banks.
Aleppo · Natural; ancient names Apre, Oinoparas, Ufrenus
Afrin Dam and Maydanki Lake
A 73-metre dam holds back the Afrin River 12 km north of Afrin, forming a 14 km lake. Opened in 2004, it drowned the old Maydanki falls; Kamruk falls lies below it.
Aleppo · Modern; built from 1997, opened 2004
Zarzar Lake
A reservoir at about 1200 metres on the road to Zabadani, dammed in 1969. It dried out in summer 2025 and refilled in 2026; what to check before you go.
Zabadani · Modern — dam completed 1969
The Tomb of Yusuf al-Azma at Maysalun
The Maysalun Martyrs’ Cemetery, 28 km northwest of Damascus on the old Beirut road: the 1930s tomb of the war minister killed fighting the French in 1920.
Damascus · French Mandate — tomb built in the 1930s
The Yabroud Rock Shelters (Iskafta Valley)
Rock shelters in the Iskafta valley at Yabroud that gave the Levant’s Yabrudian stone tool culture its name. Dug since 1930; access today is unconfirmed.
Nebek · Lower Palaeolithic — Epipalaeolithic (Natufian)
Yabroud
A Qalamoun town at 1400 metres, 77 kilometres north of Damascus. A temple that became a cathedral, Palaeolithic rock shelters and tombs from the Bronze Age.
Nebek · Bronze Age — Roman Iabruda — today
The Uwais al-Qarni Shrine, Raqqa
The shrines of Uwais al-Qarni and Ammar ibn Yasir in Raqqa: a cemetery tied to Siffin, a 1737 Ottoman inscription, a 2003 complex blown up in 2014. Status unclear.
Raqqa · Siffin cemetery — Ottoman restoration (1737) — modern complex (2003); destroyed in 2014
Tetrapyrgium (Qseir es-Seileh), a Late Roman Frontier Fort
Tetrapyrgium, a small Late Roman fort between Sura and Resafa: a 38 by 37-metre plan with four corner towers, a garrison of 70, an Umayyad monastery, and its dig.
Raqqa · Late Roman (after 324 — around 580); Umayyad monastery (around 720)