A second day in Idlib: from Ebla to Saint Simeon

If the first day in Idlib goes to the Dead Cities, the second joins the two far ends of the province: a palace archive under a mound in the south, and four basilicas built around a pillar in the north. Ruweiha’s church sits between them, and that is what makes the day long — 190 kilometres in all, four and a half hours of it behind the wheel. What you get for it is plain: three places with close to three thousand years between them, in a single day.

The route

Leave Idlib to the southeast. Ebla is 28 kilometres out, forty-five minutes; the mound sits beside the Aleppo–Damascus road, next to the village of Mardikh near Saraqib. It rises alone out of the plain, it is visible from the road and it is signposted. You walk the last part. After the mound the direction reverses: north, past Idlib, 85 kilometres to Saint Simeon, about two hours. The final climb starts from the village of Deir Semaan at the foot of the hill; the pilgrims walked the same way. The way back runs on mountain roads: 56 kilometres from Saint Simeon to Idlib, but an hour and forty minutes.

Timing

Leave Idlib at 07:30; this day has to start early. You are at Ebla by 08:15. Give it an hour and a half: the excavated walls on the mound, the ceremonial stair of the palace, and the two small rooms where the archive lay. Some 1800 whole tablets and 4700 fragments came out of them in 1974. The tablets themselves are now in the museums of Aleppo, Damascus and Idlib, so what you see here is the place itself and not the contents carried away from it. Move on to Ruweiha at 09:45 — 21 kilometres, half an hour; an hour there is enough for the Bissos church and the two-storey market building. Turn north at 11:00, 104 kilometres, and you reach Saint Simeon around 13:00. This is the long stop of the day: the four basilicas, the octagonal court and the baptistery on the south side take an hour and a half. Start back at 15:00 and you are in Idlib around 16:45.

Take care

This day depends on a car and does not work on public transport; if you are agreeing a price with a driver, say up front that the return from Saint Simeon is slow. Neither site has shade and both are open ground — hat, water and closed shoes. The mound at Ebla was damaged during the war: trenches and looting pits were cut into the acropolis, the ground is uneven in places, and you should not leave the marked line. Saint Simeon was damaged in an air strike in 2016 and there is fallen stone in some parts. The keeper and the ticket desk are not always at the gate and fees change, so carry cash. If you only have half a day, do Ebla on its own; what joins these two stops is not distance but the time between them.