Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
813 Places
The Sheikh al-Maghribi Mosque and Citadel Gate, Latakia
A 19th-century shrine mosque on the southern tip of Latakia’s Citadel hill, reached by 82 steps. The gate beside it is all that stands of the city’s castles.
Latakia · Ottoman
Al-Samra, Kessab’s Village by the Sea
Al-Samra sits in a V-shaped valley below Kessab, the last village on Syria’s coast before Turkey: dry-stone terraces, a 1942 rockfall and the Dayaa Dayaa houses.
Latakia · —
Sarmada and its Roman Twin Column
A town 30 km north of Idlib where cars are hired for the Dead Cities, with a 2nd-century Roman twin-column tomb and the Field of Blood, where Crusaders fell in 1119.
Idlib · Roman — Byzantine — Crusader
Refade, a Merchants’ Village of the Dead Cities
The oldest dated inscription in the limestone massif was found here: 73/74. Merchants’ houses among olive groves and a 6th-century tower, never lived in again.
Aleppo · Roman — Byzantine
Paltos at Arab al-Mulk
Paltos, a colony of Arwad at the mouth of the Nahr al-Sinn between Jableh and Baniyas: ancient authors, a bishopric, the Crusader fort of Belda and what is unknown.
Latakia · Phoenician — Roman — Byzantine — Crusader
Tomb of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, Deir Sharqi
The Umayyad caliph Umar II was buried in 720 at Deir Sharqi, 5 km from Maarat al-Numan: a Mamluk building, a dome added in the 1990s and three graves inside.
Idlib · Umayyad (burial) — Mamluk (building)
Jabal al-Nabi Matta Forest Reserve
A 650-hectare reserve at 1100 metres in the Tartus mountains, planted with chestnut, pine and cedar since 1976, with a shrine on top. Protected since 2009.
Tartus · Reserve since 2009; planting since 1976
Mashhad Ruhin and the Tomb of Quss ibn Sa’ida
An upland village 7 km north-west of Dana. Ibn al-Adim wrote that the middle of three graves by its mosque was said to be Quss ibn Sa’ida’s; a church lies in ruins.
Idlib · Byzantine — Ayyubid
Maraclea, the Crusader Sea Tower on the Syrian Coast
The footings of a Crusader tower lie just under the sea, over 100 m off the coast between Tartus and Baniyas. In 1285 Qalawun threatened Tripoli to have it razed.
Tartus · Umayyad garrison — Crusader — dismantled 1285
Maarrat Misrin
A town just north of Idlib: taken peacefully in 637, conquered by Byzantium in 968, hit by Crusaders in 1099, with a many-domed Great Mosque, the province’s largest.
Idlib · Early Islamic — Crusader — Ayyubid — Ottoman
The National Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Latakia
Home of Latakia’s Arabic-speaking Presbyterians, built in 1923-1924 as the marble plaque by its door says. The mission behind it reached the city in 1856.
Latakia · French Mandate (building 1923-1924)
The Al-Uwayna Mosque in Latakia
An Ottoman neighbourhood mosque in Latakia from 1727: clay jars inside its dome, tulip carving on the gutters, and an east door once angled to mark noon by shadow.
Latakia · Ottoman