Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
813 Places
Aleppo College
Its roots go back to an American college founded at Aintab in 1874; it has been in Aleppo since 1923. A working school: no entry, the facade from the street.
Aleppo · American mission school — French mandate
The Armenian Catholic Cathedral of Aleppo
The cathedral and archbishop’s seat of Aleppo’s Armenian Catholics. A mansion bought in 1831 became a church by 1840; wrecked in 2015, reopened in 2019.
Aleppo · Ottoman
The Grand Serail of Aleppo
The government house next to the citadel gate opened in 1933 and was destroyed in 2014. It was the largest public building Aleppo put up under the mandate.
Aleppo · French mandate — 1928 to 1933
Souq al-Farrayin
The south gate of the Aleppo souq. Farra means furrier, and most of the 77 shops still work in fur and leather, under a stone vault that runs the whole lane.
Aleppo · Mamluk to Ottoman
Souq al-Haddadin
One of the northern ways into the old city of Aleppo and its blacksmiths’ market: 37 workshops. Here the name and the trade still match, and entry is free.
Aleppo · Ottoman
Emar (Tell Meskene)
Bronze Age Emar lies at Tell Meskene on Lake Assad. Its tablets are not palace records but deeds, wills, marriages and adoptions, up to the city’s end in 1187 BC.
Aleppo · Bronze Age
Al-Bab
A town 40 kilometres north-east of Aleppo: a covered market split into four parts under one roof, an Umayyad great mosque and the mound of Tell Batnan.
Aleppo · Roman — Umayyad — Ottoman
The Abu Yahya al-Kawakibi Mosque and Tomb, Aleppo
A family endowment in the Jalloum quarter holding a mosque, a tomb, a madrasa, a school and a fountain in one court. This was the Kawakibi base in Aleppo.
Aleppo · Mamluk to Ottoman
Souq al-Dira’
The tailors’ lane of the Aleppo souq. Dira’ is the cubit, the measure used for cloth, and with 59 workshops this is one of the most orderly alleys in the market.
Aleppo · Ottoman
Dabiq and the Battlefield of Marj Dabiq
On the plain by Dabiq, 40 km northeast of Aleppo, the Ottomans beat the Mamluk army on 24 August 1516. What the village and the Marj Dabiq battlefield hold.
Aleppo · Umayyad — Mamluk — Ottoman
Jarabulus
A border town on the west bank of the Euphrates. The first train out of Aleppo reached it in 1912, Lausanne drew the line, and the name came from Hierapolis.
Aleppo · Late Ottoman
Lake Jabbul (Sabkhat al-Jabbul)
Syria’s largest natural lake lies 30 km southeast of Aleppo. In summer its shallows dry to white salt flats, and part of the shore is a protected waterfowl reserve.
Aleppo · Nature
