Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
813 Places
Mount Qasioun
The mountain north of Damascus and the viewpoint that fits the whole city in one frame. Half an hour from the centre. When to go up, late afternoon or night.
Damascus
Bab Antakiya
Aleppo’s western gate and the entrance to the souq. Pass through it and the open street ends, the covered market begins. The natural start of the citadel line.
Aleppo · Older foundations, Ayyubid and Mamluk layers
The Mausoleum of Saladin
A small domed tomb of 1196 against the north wall of the Umayyad Mosque. Two cenotaphs stand inside, and which of them is the real one is the surprising part.
Damascus · Ayyubid
Palmyra Castle
A medieval Arab castle on the hill west of the ruins. The only point that fits all of Palmyra into a single frame — go up an hour before the sun goes down.
Palmyra · Medieval Arab
The Takiyya al-Sulaymaniyya
Sinan’s only building in Damascus: an Ottoman complex on the Barada, finished in 1560, with twin pencil minarets. A handicraft market fills its courtyard today.
Damascus · Ottoman
The tower tombs of the Valley of the Tombs
Multi-storey stone tower tombs in the valley west of Palmyra. The only place that shows how Palmyrene families buried their dead, storey by storey. A car is needed.
Palmyra · Roman
The Khan As’ad Pasha
The largest caravanserai in Damascus, finished in 1753. Nine domes on four heavy piers, black-and-white stone, and a courtyard in the middle of the Bzouriyah souq.
Damascus · Ottoman
The Nur al-Din Bimaristan
A medieval hospital and medical school founded in 1154: a four-iwan courtyard, a muqarnas portal, and the Museum of Arab Science and Medicine inside it today.
Damascus · Zangid
The Hammam Nur al-Din
A 12th-century bathhouse that is still working, inside the Bzouriyah souq behind an ordinary-looking door. Not a museum — a place people actually wash in.
Damascus · Zangid
The Great Mosque of Aleppo
Founded in the 8th century at the west end of the Al-Madina souq. Its black-and-white paved courtyard, the minaret that fell in 2013, and the repair work today.
Aleppo · Umayyad — Mamluk
The Khalid ibn al-Walid Mosque
The landmark of Homs: a mosque standing in a wide garden, its facade banded in black basalt and white limestone. The tomb of Khalid ibn al-Walid is inside.
Homs · Ottoman
Lake Qattinah
A lake west of Homs held by an ancient dam. Water at the mouth of the gap, birds and late-afternoon light — half an hour from the city, on the road to the castle.
Homs · Antiquity — present