Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
100 Places
Al-Jalloum: an Old Quarter of Aleppo
One of Aleppo’s oldest quarters, between the Al-Madina Souq and the southern walls: the Kawakibi endowment, public fountains, old print workshops and madrasas.
Aleppo · Mamluk — Ottoman
Al-Jami al-Jadid and the Tomb of Ismat al-Din Khatun, Salihiyya
A small mosque in Salihiyya, Damascus, built as one complex with the tomb of Ismat al-Din Khatun, wife of Nur al-Din and then Saladin. Striped stone portal.
Damascus · Ayyubid
Burj Zara, a Crusader Tower near Talkalakh
An 11 m square Crusader tower on an ancient temple platform in al-Zarah, west of Homs. Basalt with reused white limestone, and one of the best preserved in the area.
Homs · Crusader
Al-Bayyada Quarter, Aleppo
The old quarter between the Aleppo Citadel and Bab al-Hadid: a mosque dated 1378, a bathhouse from 1450, an Ottoman endowment and a fountain down twenty steps.
Aleppo · Mamluk — Ottoman
Al-Bashura Mosque
A small mosque beside the Bab al-Saghir gate of Damascus, built under Nur al-Din in AH 560. Named after a bent-entrance defence, its minaret was restored in 1922.
Damascus · Zengid (reign of Nur al-Din)
Bab al-Nairab Quarter, Aleppo
The quarter at old Aleppo’s south-east gate. The arch was removed in the 1930s, but Mamluk mosques, public fountains and Ibn al-Adim’s madrasa line its lanes.
Aleppo · Ayyubid — Ottoman
The al-Izzi Mosque, Hama
A small Mamluk mosque of 1323 in Bab al-Jisr, just north of the Hama citadel. Of the madrasa its founder added next door, only an inscription on the wall remains.
Hama · Mamluk
The Orontes River
The 571-kilometre river that rises in Lebanon and runs north past Lake Homs, the norias of Hama and the Ghab Plain before reaching the sea near Samandağ.
Hama · From the Bronze Age to today
Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi Mosque and Tomb
A mosque in Salihiyya, Damascus, raised over the grave of Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, the Sufi scholar and traveller who defended coffee and tobacco. Died 1731.
Damascus · Ottoman
Tishrin Dam and Reservoir on the Euphrates
Tishrin, finished in 1999, is the last Syrian dam on the Euphrates: a 40-metre wall, a 60 km lake over Neolithic mounds, and what is known about access today.
Aleppo · Modern (1991–1999); mounds from the Neolithic to the Islamic period under the lake
Tell Tuqan (Tell Touqan)
Tell Tuqan, 15 km from Ebla near Saraqib, is a 27-hectare Bronze Age mound ringed by two walls, excavated by an Italian team, with an Ottoman-era village on top.
Idlib · Early Bronze Age — Iron Age; village Ottoman
Tell Mastuma (Ancient Astamaku)
Tell Mastuma, just south of Idlib, is an Iron Age town a Japanese team dug for 15 years, likely Astamaku, taken by Assyria in 848 BC and named on the Balawat Gates.
Idlib · Neolithic — Bronze Age — Iron Age I