Aleppo

Aleppo is one of the oldest cities in the world that has never stopped being a city, and one of the most wounded: the citadel on its mound in the middle, an Ayyubid palace-fortress entered over a stone bridge and through a gate that has held since the twelfth century; the Great Umayyad Mosque at its foot, whose Seljuk minaret of 1090 fell in the fighting of April 2013 and is being raised again stone by numbered stone; the souq of Al-Madina, thirteen kilometres of covered lanes that burned in 2012 and whose khans and alleys — Al-Saqatiyya, Khan al-Wazir — have been reopening since 2018, with the laurel soap and the pistachios back on the counters; the clock tower of Bab al-Faraj; the western gate of Bab Antakya; the Christian quarter of Jdeideh with its Ottoman houses; and the Baron Hotel of 1911, where Agatha Christie wrote and Lawrence's unpaid bill hangs framed, still standing. The east of the city was destroyed in the war of 2012 to 2016 and is being lived in again; the earthquake of February 2023 shook the citadel; and since the winter of 2024, when Syria's long war turned a page, the door of the country has stood ajar and the first travellers have come back through it.

When the door opens wider, the traveller will come up from Damascus in five hours, or across from Turkey, and give Aleppo the two days it has always deserved: the citadel in the morning — the bridge, the gate, the throne hall, the walk of the ramparts with the whole city and its wounds laid out —; the mosque's courtyard and the minaret's rising; the souq lane by lane as it reopens, a khan's courtyard, a bar of laurel soap; kebab halabi and muhammara at a table that has served them for a century; Jdeideh's churches and the Beit Ghazaleh; the Baron's bar for a drink among the ghosts; and the National Museum when its doors are open — with a local guide who tells what was and what is, because in Aleppo the two are the same street.

The Guide's honesty, with hope: Syria's long war has turned a page and the door stands ajar — travellers have begun returning, cautiously and with local guides, and Aleppo receives them with a warmth that has outlived everything —; the prudent traveller checks conditions with their chancellery the week they go, enters with a licensed operator or a trusted local guide, keeps to the old city and the days, and reads the ground as it is that month; the city's damage is everywhere and is not hidden, and the traveller who comes now comes as a witness as much as a guest; the souq's reopening is the best news the Levant has had in years; and the Guide, which held Damascus's page with the same register, holds Aleppo's with the same hope, and keeps it ready.