Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
813 Places
Al-Jisr Al-Abyad Mosque
A small Ayyubid mosque in the Salihiyya quarter of Damascus, founded as a madrasa in 1214. Its rose dome, its wooden-galleried minaret, the square it names.
Damascus · Ayyubid
The Old Centre of Jableh
A coastal town 25 kilometres south of Latakia: a market built around a Roman theatre, vaulted passages, the mosque of Ibrahim ibn Adham and a fishing harbour.
Latakia · Roman — Mamluk — Ottoman
The Jdayde Quarter
Aleppo’s Christian quarter outside the walls: winding lanes, carved stone mansions, four churches and two squares. Hit hard in the war, now under repair.
Aleppo · Mamluk — Ottoman
Babisqa, a Dead City in Jebel Barisha
Two Byzantine churches on Jebel Barisha, the one bath house certainly identified in the region, and a market dated 547. The west church is dated 609-610.
Idlib · Roman — Byzantine
The Bahsita Mosque
A small Mamluk mosque of 1350 in the al-Aqaba quarter of Aleppo, a lane behind the clock tower. Its octagonal minaret was moved to the east wall in 1911.
Aleppo · Mamluk
The Bab Musalla Mosque, Damascus
An Ayyubid mosque outside the Damascus walls, in Midan. Begun in 1209 on the city’s Eid prayer ground; its octagonal minaret balcony looks over the quarter.
Damascus · Ayyubid, with Ottoman repairs
The Aziziyah Quarter
The first new quarter Aleppo built outside its walls, from 1868: wide straight streets, cut stone facades, churches and the city’s first police station.
Aleppo · Late Ottoman — French mandate
The Al-Atassi Mosque, Homs
A white stone mosque at the foot of the Homs citadel mound, opened in 2009 on the Atassi family graveyard: a square minaret, rows of small domes, a wide garden.
Homs · Contemporary
The Amara Quarter
The quarter north of the Umayyad Mosque, where Saladin’s tomb, the Zahiriyya library and the Sayyida Ruqayya shrine sit within one short walk of each other.
Damascus · Mamluk — Ottoman
Tell Nebi Mend (Kadesh)
The mound beside the Orontes, 24 km south-west of Homs. This is Kadesh, where Egypt met the Hittites and the war ended in the first written peace treaty.
Homs · Bronze Age — the kingdom of Kadesh
The Al-Tawashi Mosque
A Mamluk mosque of 1348 in Aleppo: the long colonnaded facade it turns to the street, the muqarnas hood over the entrance, and its condition after the war.
Aleppo · Mamluk
The Old Town of Tartus
A lived-in quarter built inside the Templar fortress of Tartus. The curtain wall carries the houses, the moat is still open, and none of it is a museum.
Tartus · Crusader — Mamluk — Ottoman
