Galleries

The Ottomans moved quickly to set their mark on Syria after defeating the last Mamluks outside Aleppo in 1516. One of their first priorities was to establish infrastructure for the annual Muslim pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca each year. The Tekkiye was a major prestige project set in an area reserved to handle the tens of […]

Syria has an important network of museums, of which the ones in Aleppo and Damascus are given ‘national’ status and provide a comprehensive range of material from all the main eras and regions of the countryamascus museum is spread over a large number of rooms and halls. Among the highlights are the important collections from […]

This itinerary covers the areas immediately outside the southwest corner of the city walls. The street called al-Sinaniye leads from the mosque of that name towards the southwest where it touches on  the Midan Quarter (see separate itinerary), skirting the historic Cemetery of Bab al-Saghir, said to contains several burials of significance in early Islam. […]

Straight Street must be one of the best-known thoroughfares in the world, famed as the ‘Street Called Straight’ of the New Testament and its account of St Paul’s eventful sojourn in Damascus. Along its 1.5 km length, so much history unfolds before your eyes that it is difficult to take it all in. This itinerary […]

This itinerary takes you through the busy commercial heart of the old city of Damascus. The streets are still lined with the great khans of the trading enterprises of the Mamluk and Ottoman periods as well as with important tombs, madrases and mosques—illustrating the close association over the centuries between trade and faith under Islam. […]

Only recently liberated from centuries of use as a fort and a prison, the Damascus Citadel is still relatively unknown from an internal perspective. Outside, the south face is obscured by the long shopping street, the Suq al-Hamidiye, but the external walls to the west, north and partly on the east offer a walking circuit […]