A Trip to Syria's Monuments and Cities Before the War: Forbidden Wonders

"The Middle East is the cradle of civilization, and the Gaza strip is the graveyard."

Before the country engaged in civil war, Syria was a great destination for history and lovers of old stone. This land offers terrific castles, able to fire the imagination of any enthusiast of swashbuckling tales, romantic classical ruins with the peculiarity of not being buried or mixed with newer buildings on top, and the exotic traditional Arabic souks that seem out of an Agatha Christie novel, etc.

Because of its strategic position, this territory played a key role since antiquity. It is located along the main trade routes of the Far East, and also where the powerful civilizations born around the Mediterranean on one side collide with the ones from Mesopotamia on the other.

This could explain why the whole region has been fought over so much. Anyway, here we are focusing only on what the world is missing out on, and the rich heritage of this extraordinary country, hoping that political unrest will soon come to an end.

Krak des Chevaliers, the finest and best preserved Crusader castle in the world. The Crusade wars were originally launched to recover the Holy Land from the hands of the infidel Muslims, according to the official credo.

The other version reveals that all these formidable military expeditions had a more mundane reason: to control commercial routes and the goods that passed along them - Hold on, this story sounds familiar...

Saladin was a famous general who served in the ranks of the Muslim armies.

The most remarkable feature of his castle is the moat that was carved in the stone, leaving this stack as support for the drawbridge.
Image by Pasha Golovin

In the north, near the Turkish border, are the Dead cities. These are hundreds of villages from the Byzantine era abandoned between the 8th and 10th centuries, for no clear reason.
Image by Ibontxo

The Church of Saint Simeon Stylites was erected around a column, on top of which this ascetic man, hungry for God, stood for most of his life.

There's a hilarious short film directed by Luis Buñuel in 1965, Simon of the Desert, loosely based on this story.
Image by Andrea Campi

Apamea, for the Roman column fans.
Image by Yeowatzup

The massive Citadel of Aleppo. This settlement has been inhabited at least before the invention of the wheel.
Image by Yeowatzup

The Great Mosque. Aleppo was built at the crossroads of trade roads like the Silk Road, allowing the city to become, for many centuries, one of the richest in the world.

25/04/2013 Update: This minaret was destroyed during the war. Today, the whole complex is being rebuilt. (BBC news).
Image by Yeowatzup

Not to be missed, is the labyrinthine souk. Aleppo saved its ancient architecture thanks to the fact that the metropolis was in decline by the 19th century, and missed all the destructive modern urban trends of that era.
Image by Druidabruxux

The Giant Norias of Hama are in the middle of the country. The magic of photography shows us a bucolic image, while the ugly truth is that this river is more like a sewer than anything else.
Image by Jon Martin

The wheels can be up to 20 meters in diameter (around 70 feet or 21 meters) and were used to raise water from the flow of the Orontes river up to the aqueducts that irrigated the city.
Image by Jon Martin

The sunset in Hama.
Image by C0nstellation

The Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian. Apart from reminding me of a reggae band, it's famous thanks to the precious collection of Romanesque paintings that shelters the church.
Image by Stijn Nieuwendijk

The Bosra Amphitheater is probably the best-preserved from the ancient world.
Image by Jorisz

Finally, we've arrived at the capital, Damascus, to take a walk around the busy Al-Hamediyeh souk.

This is a market resembling a mix of Parisian galleries with an oriental flavor.
Image by Mojotrotters

Syrian hospitality is also legendary. Another proverb says that the people here are only ever a slave to their guests.
Image by Jon Martin