Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
813 Places
The Church of Saint Elian
In the old city of Homs, near the Palmyra Gate. The frescoes in the crypt of this church, founded in 432, are held to be the oldest surviving in Syria.
Homs · Early Byzantine foundation — crypt frescoes 6th–12th century
The Maarat al-Numan Mosaic Museum
Roman and Byzantine mosaics from the churches of the Dead Cities, housed in an Ottoman caravanserai. Badly damaged in the war and open to visitors again.
Idlib · Ottoman building — Roman and Byzantine collection
Qatna
A Bronze Age capital 18 km northeast of Homs. Its square earth rampart still frames the plain, and the royal tomb beneath its palace was found unopened.
Homs · Bronze Age — Iron Age
Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi
An Umayyad palace in open steppe: two walled enclosures built for Caliph Hisham in 728, decorative towers, a bathhouse, and water piped in from far away.
Palmyra · Umayyad
Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi
The Umayyad desert palace whose facade is now the entrance of the National Museum in Damascus. What is left on the site, and where the rest of it went.
Homs · Umayyad
Qalaat al-Madiq
Just west of Apamea, on the hill that juts into the Ghab plain. The walls are not empty: a village still lives inside, and a museum fills the old khan.
Hama · Roman foundation — Ayyubid, Mamluk, Ottoman
Mahalibeh Castle
A hilltop castle east of Latakia, at 750 metres. Byzantine, then Frankish, then Ayyubid and Mamluk; it was never resettled after the earthquake of 1408.
Latakia · Byzantine — Mamluk
Al-Kahf Castle
An Ismaili castle on a ridge between two gorges in the coastal mountains. It was Rashid al-Din Sinan’s base, and its only entrance is a narrow rock path.
Tartus · Ismaili — Mamluk
Qal’at Ja’bar
A hill above the Euphrates that became an island when the reservoir filled. Nur ad-Din’s brick castle, its slender minaret, and how the site stands today.
Aleppo · Uqaylid — Zengid — Mamluk
Bourzey Castle
A steep Crusader castle on the eastern flank of the coastal range, above the Ghab plain. Saladin took it in 1188 in three days; towers and cisterns remain.
Hama · Byzantine — Crusader — Ayyubid
Homs Museum
The archaeological museum on Shukri al-Quwatli Street. Finds from Kadesh and Qatna are held here, in a building raised in stages between 1922 and 1963.
Homs · Building 1922–1963 · collection from prehistory to the Ottomans
Harim Castle
A castle on a mound above the Amuq plain, holding the Antioch to Aleppo road. Byzantine in origin, it changed hands six times between Crusaders and Zengids.
Idlib · Byzantine — Crusader — Zengid — Ayyubid
