Joseph and Sherwin's blog

After a couple of days in Damascus, I took a bus (5 hours) to Aleppo, the main city in northern Syria and a contender alongside Damascus for the distinction of being the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Like Damascus, Aleppo consists of an “old city” with a citadel and souq, surrounded by the new city which itself is divided into many neighborhoods. Rather than going strictly chronologically with my visit, I thought I would start by telling you just about the sights in the old city, some of which I returned to on different occasions.

The most impressive part of Aleppo’s Old City is the citadel, a fortified mini-city on a massive mound surrounded by a moat. For some reason, many guidebooks claim that it is a natural hill, but my archaeologist friends emphasize to me that it is a “tell”–that is, a mound built up from centuries of occupation. These pictures of the citadel entrance and the fortification wall perhaps give you an impression of its scale:

The inside of the citadel is quite impressive as well, containing remains of a number of buildings, including the Ayyubid and Hammam palaces, and the Great Mosque:

And the view of the city from the citadel is simply spectacular:

West of the citadel is the Great Mosque (not to be confused with the [ancient] Great Mosque of the citadel) which I did not enter this time but did get a good view of from outside:

The Old City also contains a souq, which has a bit of a different look from the Damascus souq, but is just as lively:

South of the citadel are a number of other historic buildings such as: the Hammam (“bath”) Yalbugha, which apparently had been restored for modern use but it wasn’t open when I was there,

the Altunbugha Mosque,

the Mosque al-Sakakini,

the Mosque al-Tawashi (which was undergoing renovations),

and the Bab (“gate”) al-Maqam on the southern end of the old city:

These dudes near the gate insisted I take their picture, which I did, but when I subsequently tried to get a picture with them, they just ignored me (having immediately resumed their previous line of conversation):