Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
813 Places
The Banqusa Mosque, Aleppo
The main mosque of the Banqusa suburb, northeast of the walls of Aleppo. Mamluk in style, and its stone minaret is the best kept part of the building.
Aleppo · Mamluk (the sultanate that ruled Syria from Cairo)
The Badinjk Mosque, Aleppo
A 17th-century mosque that gave the quarter its name. Its minaret rises over the bent entrance corridor, and its founder lies inside the prayer hall itself.
Aleppo · Ottoman
The Bab al-Ahmar Mosque
A Mamluk mosque of 885/1480 south-east of the Aleppo Citadel, known for its carved stone front and a minaret unusually short by the measure of the city.
Aleppo · Mamluk
Bab al-Jinan, the Gate of Gardens
One of the western gates of Aleppo, named for the gardens along the Queiq. The gate was pulled down around 1900, and a souq now carries its name on the spot.
Aleppo · Hamdanid — demolished around 1900
Azaz
Azaz became a border town in 1921, when Kilis was left on the other side: the Omari Mosque, a castle that kept changing hands, and the mound of Tell Azaz.
Aleppo · Assyrian — Crusader — Ayyubid — Ottoman
Saint George’s Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Aleppo
The first Melkite Greek Catholic church in Aleppo, consecrated in 1836. When the congregation moved to Sulaymaniyah in 1969, the old building became a shrine.
Aleppo · Ottoman
Kobani (Ayn al-Arab)
Kobani grew up beside a Baghdad Railway station built in 1912: the old name Arab Punar, a border drawn along the tracks in 1921, and rebuilding since 2015.
Aleppo · Late Ottoman — French Mandate — present
Atarib (al-Atharib)
A town 25 km west of Aleppo on the old road to Antioch and a Crusader frontier fort: ceded to Tancred in 1110, retaken in 1119, wrecked by the 1138 earthquake.
Aleppo · Crusader — Zengid
Arslan Tash (Ancient Hadatu)
Arslan Tash near Kobani was the Assyrian city of Hadatu. Its stone gate lions gave it its name; its ivories are in Aleppo and the Louvre, its reliefs in Istanbul.
Aleppo · Aramaean — Neo-Assyrian — Hellenistic
Afrin
A town 63 kilometres north-west of Aleppo, cut in two by its river: more than thirteen million olive trees, pine forest and the valley road to Ain Dara.
Aleppo · A modern town in old country
Souq al-Saqatiyya
The first restoration in Aleppo finished from end to end after the war. A 150-metre covered lane, 52 shops, eight months of work, reopened in July 2019.
Aleppo · Mamluk to Ottoman
Souq al-Hokedun (Khan al-Quds)
The Aleppo khan where Armenian pilgrims gathered on the way to Jerusalem. Hokedun is Armenian for house of the spirit; a quarter grew beside it in 1624.
Aleppo · Mamluk to Ottoman