Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
813 Places
Qatura and Its Roman Rock-Cut Tombs
Roman tombs cut into the rock below Jebel Sheikh Barakat, the earliest with an inscription dated AD 122. Carved niches on a great rock and a 3rd-century tower.
Aleppo · Roman — Byzantine
Karadouran, Kessab
An Armenian village on the slope from Kessab down to the sea, where the region’s 1915 deportations began. Two churches, a chapel and a bay on the border below.
Latakia · Armenian settlement since Ottoman times; churches 19th–21st century
Sheikh Deeb Castle (Qulay’a)
A Nizari Ismaili castle on a cone of volcanic rock above Qulay’a village, about 2 km from Hosn Suleiman: wall stubs between the crags and a well cut into the rock.
Tartus · Ismaili — Mamluk — Ottoman
Qalaat al-Qawz, the Bronze Age Hill of Baniyas
A hill of about 6 hectares in the Qawz quarter of Baniyas, walled in the Bronze Age with blocks of several tonnes. Now mostly houses: what still shows.
Tartus · Bronze Age
Maniqa Castle in the Syrian Coastal Mountains
A castle between Jableh and Baniyas, raised by a ruse in 1028 and taken after a 13-day siege in 1031. A 15-20 minute dirt path climbs to it from Wadi al-Qalaa.
Latakia · Byzantine — Crusader — Ismaili — Mamluk
Khirbet Hass, a Dead City in Southern Jebel Zawiya
Beside the town of Hass on Jebel Zawiya: six churches, a hall with a Doric-colonnaded court, a courtyard villa and a two-storey pyramid tomb of the 6th century.
Idlib · Roman — Byzantine
Khirbet al-Khatib, Temple and Church Ruins on Jebel Barisha
Temple remains, a church dated 473 and a baptistery dated 532 share one slope of Jebel Barisha. Butler found the second moulding in its apse in no other church.
Idlib · Roman — Byzantine
Hawat al-Jubab, a Sinkhole in the Qadmus Hills
A sinkhole 20 metres wide and 35 metres deep by the village of al-Dey near Qadmus. A concrete stair leads to an 800 m² floor with a freshwater spring in one corner.
Tartus · Geological; a Stone Age dwelling
Khan Shaykhun
The first Idlib town on the road from Hama: a 14th-century Mamluk khan that gave it its name, the Takiyya Mosque and a mound with layers from the 20th century BC.
Idlib · Bronze Age — Mamluk — Ottoman
Khan al-Hinta, Latakia’s Old Wheat Inn
The Ottoman inn that stored Latakia’s wheat for export, first recorded in 1726, with Roman granite columns in its front wall. Now a metal depot seen from the street.
Latakia · Ottoman (on Roman columns)
Khan Beit Jabbour in Baniyas
A late Ottoman khan on the seafront road in Baniyas: a caravanserai that became a tobacco store and then Armenian homes, now partly in ruins. What you can see.
Tartus · Late Ottoman (exact year unknown)
Al-Haffah, the Ridge Town on the Road to Saladin Castle
An orchard town strung along a wooded ridge 33 km east of Latakia and 7 km from Saladin Castle, with a past running from a medieval cloth to the revolt of 1919.
Latakia · Recorded since the Middle Ages
