Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
813 Places
Al-Qaiqan Mosque, Aleppo
A small mosque 100 metres north of Bab Antakya in Aleppo. Ancient columns sawn across are set into its walls, and one block carries Hittite hieroglyphs.
Aleppo · Mamluk — built with reused ancient stone
Al-Qaryatayn
An oasis town in the desert between Homs and Palmyra: its Roman bath complex, its mud-brick quarters and Syriac churches, and what the war left behind in 2015.
Homs · Roman — Ottoman
Kalota, a Hill with Three Layers
A pagan sanctuary on the summit, a basilica dated 492, and church buildings turned into a fort in the Middle Ages. The Arabic name comes from that last layer.
Aleppo · Roman — Byzantine — medieval
Qadmus Castle
A castle on an isolated rock above the town, 26 kilometres east of Baniyas. For a time it was the chief seat of the Ismailis in Syria; today it is ruined.
Tartus · Crusader — Ismaili — Mamluk
Khawabi Castle
An Ismaili castle on a rock hill among olive groves northeast of Tartus. Inside the walls is a village people still live in, not a monument to walk around.
Tartus · Byzantine — Ismaili — Mamluk
Forty Martyrs Cathedral, Homs
The Greek Orthodox cathedral in the old city of Homs, named for forty soldiers killed at Sebaste. Its carved black basalt doorway is the thing to look at.
Homs · On record since the 15th century
Wadi al-Nasara, the Valley of the Christians
A green valley of thirty-two villages below Krak des Chevaliers: Greek Orthodox towns, Saint George’s Monastery, and the hilltop statue of Our Lady of the Valley.
Homs · —
Kharab Shams, the Basilica on Stilts
An earthquake took the outer walls and the apse of this Jebel Sem’an church. What is left stands on slender columns, the upper storey seemingly in mid-air.
Aleppo · Byzantine
Khan al-Jumruk in Damascus
The Ottoman khan beside the Al-Hamidiyah Souq in Damascus. Its right-angled arm, its 53 storerooms, the dome windows, and the cloth traders working under it.
Damascus · Ottoman
Khan al-Khayyatin, the Tailors’ Khan
The first Ottoman khan built in Damascus, dating from 1552 in the tailors’ souq. Twelve rooms ring its court, and it still works in cloth and clothing.
Damascus · Ottoman
Hammam al-Nahhasin, Aleppo
A 12th-century bathhouse inside the Al-Madina souq, south of the Great Mosque. Damaged in 2012-2016, repaired in 2022, and today working as a bath again.
Aleppo · Ayyubid — Ottoman (12th to 19th century)
Martyrs’ Church, Aleppo
An Armenian Evangelical church in the Sulaymaniyah quarter. Refugees from Aintab founded the congregation in 1931, and the plain hall opened in March 1965.
Aleppo · Modern
