Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
813 Places
Tell es-Sweyhat
A 45-hectare Bronze Age town on the east shore of Lake Assad that stayed above water: a ring-shaped mound, 3rd-millennium walls, a hilltop temple and shaft tombs.
Raqqa · Early Bronze Age to early Middle Bronze Age (3100–1900 BC); Hellenistic
Bouqras, a Neolithic Mound on the Euphrates
A 5-hectare Neolithic mound 35 km from Deir ez-Zor, with mudbrick houses, a bird frieze and Anatolian obsidian. The house to see is in the Deir ez-Zor Museum.
Deir ez-Zor · Neolithic, about 7400-6200 BC
Tell Ajaja (Shadikanni)
Shadikanni, an Assyrian city on the lower Khabur, later Roman Horaba: home of the god Samnuha, where ISIS smashed an Assyrian statue from the site in 2014.
Hasakah · Middle and Neo-Assyrian — Roman
Sura, a Roman Legionary City near Raqqa
Sura, 25 km west of Raqqa on the Euphrates, was a Late Roman legionary city: a 1700-metre wall, a Persian siege, a bishopric, and what is unknown about it today.
Raqqa · Roman — Byzantine (walls of Justinian's reign)
Saidnaya
A pilgrimage town at 1450 metres, 30 kilometres north of Damascus, with over 40 churches and chapels, 21 monasteries and an icon medieval pilgrims wrote about.
Damascus · Aramaic Danaba — Roman — medieval pilgrimage centre — today
St George Monastery in Saidnaya
A working Greek Orthodox monastery on the hill at Saidnaya’s southern entrance, with Byzantine lower walls, a cave chapel found in 1912 and icons dated to 1707.
Damascus · Byzantine walls — repaired in 1905
Al-Rabweh Gorge, Damascus
The last narrow gorge the Barada passes before the Damascus plain, where the river splits into canals. Ibn Jubayr praised it in 1184; the Dummar road runs through.
Damascus · A pleasure ground from Fatimid and Zengid sources to the present
The Walls of al-Rafiqa, Raqqa
Of the horseshoe wall al-Mansur built for al-Rafiqa in 772, 2660 metres still stand: brick-faced mudbrick, towers, the north gate, and where to start walking it.
Raqqa · Abbasid (772; brick facing under Harun al-Rashid)
Mor Ephrem Monastery, Home of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch near Saidnaya
The Syriac Orthodox monastery near Maarat Saidnaya, consecrated in 1996: the patriarch’s home, the seminary and a five-storey building of 4000 square metres.
Damascus · Modern — consecrated in 1996
The Rock-Cut Temples of Mar Takla at Manin, North of Damascus
A Roman sanctuary cut into Mar Takla mountain above Manin, 20 km north of Damascus: a temple, two chapels, a monumental rock-cut gate and an inscription dated 449.
Damascus · Roman — early Byzantine (inscription of 449)
Mayadin, Syria
The second-largest town in Deir ez-Zor province, 44 km down the Euphrates. Site of Abbasid Rahba and a base for Qal’at al-Rahba, Terqa and Tell Masaikh.
Deir ez-Zor · Abbasid foundation (Rahbat Malik ibn Tawk) — present
The Convent of Saint Thecla, Maaloula
A Greek Orthodox convent at the foot of the cliff in Maaloula, built against the cave where Saint Thecla is said to have lived. A holy spring and 18th-century icons.
Damascus · Early Christian cave; present buildings 1756-1959
