Ancient Aleppo

Listen first. A cart rattles over worn stone. Somewhere a shutter rolls up with a metal groan, and a shopkeeper calls a greeting down a narrow lane. The air carries the sharp, green smell of laurel soap and the warmth of baking bread. Underfoot, the paving is smooth and uneven, polished by feet over many centuries. Above you, the old city rises in honey-coloured limestone toward a great fortified hill. Welcome to Ancient Aleppo.

Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth. People have lived on this spot for thousands of years. Its old name, Halab, appears in texts written more than four thousand years ago. Traders, armies, and pilgrims passed through, because the city sat where routes from the Mediterranean met routes from Mesopotamia and Persia. Each group left something behind. The old city you are walking through holds all of those layers at once.

Legend gives the city a gentle origin story. Locals say the prophet Abraham once camped on the hill here and milked his cow, sharing the milk with poor travellers. The Arabic word for milk is close to the city's name, Halab. Scholars treat this as folklore, and the true origin of the name is older and uncertain. Still, you will hear the story told with real affection. It says something about how Aleppo likes to see itself — as a place of hospitality.

Now look toward the highest point in the old city. The Citadel sits on a huge mound, partly natural and partly built up by human settlement over thousands of years. Its sloping sides were once faced with smooth stone, a defensive surface called a glacis that made climbing almost impossible. A deep ditch surrounds the base. The fortress you see today took much of its shape under the Ayyubids, the dynasty founded by Saladin's family, around the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Archaeologists working on the Citadel hill found the remains of a temple to the Storm God, an ancient deity of the region. Carved stone reliefs showed gods and creatures from a world far older than the castle walls. In other words, the fortress stands on top of a sacred site. Long before soldiers guarded this hill, people climbed it to worship. The castle is the newest chapter on very old ground.

The approach to the Citadel is one of the great entrances of the medieval world. A long stone bridge, carried on tall arches, crosses the ditch and climbs toward a massive gate tower. Inside, the passage turns sharply several times. This was deliberate. Attackers could not charge straight through, and defenders above could strike them at every corner. Look at the iron-plated doors and the carved stone around them. Every element had a job.

From the Citadel, the old city spreads out in a maze of lanes. At its heart lies the Great Mosque, also known as the Umayyad Mosque of Aleppo. Its courtyard is paved in patterned stone, light and dark, which seems to shift as you walk across it. For about nine hundred years, a tall square minaret stood here, built in the late eleventh century. It was one of the finest stone towers in the Islamic world.

That minaret fell in 2013, during the fighting of the Syrian civil war. Much of the old city was damaged between 2012 and 2016. Markets burned, roofs collapsed, and homes were emptied. In 2023, a powerful earthquake caused further damage, including to parts of the Citadel. As you walk, you may see fresh stone beside old stone, scaffolding, and patched walls. These are not flaws in the view. They are the visible work of a city repairing itself.

The covered markets, or souqs, run for many kilometres through the old city. They are among the longest covered markets in the world. Vaulted stone roofs keep the lanes cool in summer and dry in winter. Light falls in through small openings above, in soft shafts. Traditionally, each lane had its own trade — spices in one, textiles in another, copper and gold elsewhere. Some lanes are trading again, rebuilt stall by stall.

Between the market lanes you will find khans. A khan is a large courtyard building where travelling merchants stayed, stored goods, and stabled animals. Traders slept upstairs and did business downstairs. Khan al-Saboun, the soap khan, and Khan al-Wazir are two well-known examples. Look for their decorated gateways, with bands of carved stone in contrasting colours. For centuries, these buildings were the offices and hotels of international trade.

And then there is the soap. Aleppo soap is made from olive oil and laurel oil, cooked, poured, cut into blocks, and stacked to cure for months. The outside of each bar turns golden while the inside stays green. Many bars carry a stamp from the maker. It is one of the oldest soap traditions in the world. If you smell that clean, slightly herbal scent in the lanes, you are smelling something Aleppo has exported for centuries.

The old city was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the 1980s. It was later placed on the list of World Heritage in Danger because of the war. Today, local craftsmen, architects, and families are slowly bringing it back. Stonemasons cut new blocks by hand to match the old ones. Traders reopen shops their grandfathers ran. The recovery is uneven and still ongoing, so some areas may be closed or fenced off when you visit.

Before you move on, pause for a moment. Look at the stone around you. Some of it is centuries old, and some was cut only a few years ago. Listen to the voices in the lane, the hammering from a workshop, the call to prayer rising over the rooftops. As you walk away, notice how the Citadel stays in view above the streets. It has watched this city for a very long time... and it is still watching.