Demo site — Arsu Tours is not a real company. Nothing here can be booked. What this is
Aramean, Roman, Umayyad and Ottoman Damascus, still lived-in behind the walls
Crowds under the barrel-vaulted iron roof of Souq al-Hamidiyya in Damascus. Photo by Mahmoud Sulaiman on Unsplash · Unsplash Licence
One of a small handful of cities with a genuine — and genuinely contested — claim to continuous habitation since deep antiquity. Courtyard houses behind unmarked doors, the Umayyad Mosque at first light, and a guild street where brass is still worked by hand.
The claim you will see repeated is that Damascus is the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth. The honest version is more interesting: it is one of a small group — with Aleppo, Byblos and Jericho — where the claim is real, argued over, and unresolved. Carbon dating at nearby Tell Ramad points to occupation from around 6300 BC. The walled city is conventionally put in the 3rd millennium BC.
UNESCO inscribed the Ancient City in 1979 for roughly 125 monuments spanning Aramean, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman Damascus. About 4.5 km of wall still rings it, pierced by eight gates, seven of which trace a Roman circuit.
The Old City came through the war comparatively better than Aleppo or Palmyra — it was never a frontline in the same way. That is not the same as untouched. Years of war, sanctions and underinvestment put it on the Danger List in 2013, and it is still there.
Condition notes are given for each site, including where something was destroyed or is closed. They are the point of this page.
Built 705–715 CE over an Aramean sanctuary to Hadad, then a Roman temple to Jupiter, then a Byzantine church. Its shrine is venerated by Muslims and Christians alike for relics associated with John the Baptist.
Open and active — a working mosque before it is anything else.
The covered market running to the mosque gate. Its metal roof still bears holes attributed to French artillery fire during the 1925 Great Syrian Revolt.
Open and busy, per 2025–2026 reporting.
The Via Recta, named in the Book of Acts, running east–west across the Old City with scattered Roman colonnade remains still standing in it.
Open and walkable.
An 18th-century governor’s residence, built 1749–1750, and the clearest single lesson in how a Damascene courtyard house is put together.
Functioning museum — check current hours before going.
Beside the Umayyad Mosque, from 1196. The marble sarcophagus added in the late 19th century is most often credited to Sultan Abdulhamid II, though sources genuinely disagree about who gave it.
Intact and open.
The historic Christian quarter east of the mosque. A residential neighbourhood people actually live in, not a heritage set.
Inhabited, open to visitors.
Spared the large-scale destruction seen in Aleppo and Palmyra, but on the Danger List since 2013 after years of war, sanctions and underinvestment. Restoration through 2026 is real but uneven.
Damascus International Airport has had resumed international service since January 2025 — Qatar Airways from 7 January 2025, Royal Jordanian from 31 January 2025, Turkish Airlines since. Mount Qasioun reopened gradually after December 2024; the Citadel reopened in spring 2026.
Damascene courtyard houses are a craft tradition in their own right, and a number have been restored as small hotels inside the Old City.
