Travel in Syria: six heritage sites in danger and visitors returning

How many visitors are coming back

The numbers are the ministry's own and are best read as such. In January 2011 it reported about 6 million foreign tourists in 2009 and 8.5 million in 2010, and Wikipedia's article on tourism records revenue of US$8.4 billion in 2010. By 2013 tourism revenue had fallen 94% by that account and the tourism minister counted 289 damaged tourist sites; by 2015 visitor numbers were down by more than 98%. The Syrian Economic Forum disputed even the ministry's figure of 45,000 tourists in the first half of 2015, saying Iranian religious tourism was all that remained.

The ministry's count for January to November 2025 shows the shape of the return. Total visitors, Syrians abroad included, rose 18% on 2024 to 3.56 million. Arab tourists rose from 272,844 to 491,028, led by Jordan, the Gulf states and Egypt, and arrivals from non-Arab countries rose 79% to 376,726, led by Turkey with about 94,000, then Germany, the United Kingdom and Norway. August carried 14% of the year's Arab and foreign arrivals, and October was 15% busier than September.

The ministry's plans are larger than its present. It aims for five million visitors in 2026, counts 1,468 tourism establishments that need rebuilding or reopening, and the tourism minister told The National in January 2026 that about $100 billion of investment would be needed over seven years. In September 2025 the ministry signed investment deals worth $1.5 billion for hotels, entertainment complexes and the restoration of historic quarters, and its strategy for 2026 to 2030 sets the target of raising tourism's share of GDP from 15% in 2025 to between 30% and 35% by 2030, as the minister described it to The National. It also names medical tourism as a line of growth, with a projected $500 million a year by 2030. These are the ministry's targets, not outturns. Syria: economy covers the reconstruction money.

What the old city of Damascus holds

UNESCO dates Damascus to the third millennium BC and inscribed its old city in 1979. Its streets still follow the Roman grid, running north to south and east to west. Remains of the Temple of Jupiter, several Roman gates and a stretch of the Roman wall are the oldest visible layer. The Great Mosque of the Umayyads, built in the eighth century on the site of a Roman temple and over a Christian basilica, is the centre of the old city, and UNESCO counts some 125 monuments in all. The walls, the citadel and some mosques and tombs are medieval. Most of the rest, palaces and private houses among them, dates from after the Ottoman conquest of 1516; UNESCO names the Azm Palace, madrasas, khans and public baths among the major monuments.

What a walk through the walled city passes

The walled city covers about 86 hectares, by the figure in Wikipedia's article on Damascus. The Roman Decumanus, the Straight Street of the Acts of the Apostles, runs east to west for more than 1,500 metres as the street of Bab Sharqi and the covered Souq Midhat Pasha; Bab Sharqi, the eastern gate, is the only one of seven to keep its Roman plan. The citadel stands in the north-west corner. In the north-east, Bab Tuma opens into the Christian quarter of the same name, with the Chapel of Saint Paul at Bab Kisan, the House of Saint Ananias and the seats of several Eastern churches.

The Azm Palace, built in 1750 for the Ottoman governor Asad Pasha al-Azm, houses the Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions. Caravanserais such as Khan Asad Pasha and Khan Sulayman Pasha and hammams such as Nur al-Din survive from the trading city, and the restored Jewish quarter, Harat al-Yahud, keeps houses such as Bayt Farhi and Maktab Anbar. The Shia shrines of Sayyida Zaynab and Sayyida Ruqayya stand in and near the city, and the Twelver Shia community lives mainly around them. The old city's own population has fallen: about 30,000 people moved out between 1995 and 2009 for newer housing, and the World Monuments Fund listed the old city and Bab Tuma among endangered sites in 2007.

Beyond the walls, the Barada and its Ghouta oasis gave the city its site at the foot of Mount Qasioun. ### Where Damascenes go in the summer

The Anti-Lebanon above the city holds the resorts its people use in the heat. Bloudan, 51 kilometres north-west, draws summer visitors from Damascus, Lebanon and the Gulf for its mild, dry air; Zabadani near the Lebanese border and the small mountain town of Madaya are resorts too. Saidnaya, 1,500 metres up, was one of the bishoprics of the ancient Patriarchate of Antioch. Maaloula, on UNESCO's tentative list since 1999 and one of the villages where Western Neo-Aramaic is still spoken, lies about 56 kilometres north-east.

What Aleppo lost and what it keeps

UNESCO describes Aleppo as a city at the crossing of trade routes since the second millennium BC, ruled in turn by Hittites, Assyrians, Arabs, Mongols, Mamluks and Ottomans. The old city inscribed in 1986 covers about 350 hectares within and around the walls, with a thirteenth-century citadel, a twelfth-century Great Mosque and the seventeenth-century madrasas, palaces, caravanserais and hammams of the Ottoman town. The covered souqs were part of the fabric.

The war ran through it. UNESCO published an emergency assessment of the damage, and its own reports on the city carry the title "Five years of conflict". The World Bank's assessment of 2025 lists Aleppo governorate among those with the heaviest physical damage and the largest rebuilding bill.

What Palmyra and the desert hold

Palmyra lies in an oasis in the Syrian desert north-east of Damascus. UNESCO describes a caravan city first mentioned in the archives of Mari in the second millennium BC, which came under Roman control in the first century AD and grew rich on the trade between Persia, India, China and Rome. A colonnaded street 1,100 metres long linked its temples, its agora and its theatre, and the Valley of the Tombs outside the walls holds its tower tombs.

During the Islamic State's occupation UNESCO's director-general condemned the destruction of the temple of Baalshamin on 24 August 2015, the Temple of Bel on 1 September 2015 and the monumental arch on 5 October 2015, and in January 2017 the destruction of the tetrapylon and serious damage to the theatre. After the town was retaken, the Lion of Al-lat statue was restored and the conservation work was completed in October 2017.

Further east the Euphrates carries the ancient sites of Mari and Dura-Europos, on UNESCO's tentative list since 2011, and the Abbasid city of Raqqa-Rafiqa, on the list since 1999. In the far south the Ancient City of Bosra, inscribed in 1980, keeps its Roman theatre, with the remains of baths, colonnades, houses and temples around it; UNESCO's director-general condemned destruction there during the war.

Which castles and dead villages line the west

Two fortresses inscribed together in 2006 sit on hilltops above the western valleys. The Crac des Chevaliers began as a post of Kurdish troops garrisoned by the Mirdasids in the eleventh century, which gave it the Arabic name Hisn al-Akrad, the Castle of the Kurds. Raymond II, Count of Tripoli, gave it to the Knights Hospitaller in 1142. The castle that stands was built by the Hospitallers between 1142 and 1271, when it fell, and was extended by the Mamluks in the late thirteenth century; UNESCO describes it as among the best preserved Crusader castles. Qal'at Salah El-Din, in an isolated upland near Latakia and partly in ruins, keeps Byzantine work of the tenth century, Frankish rebuilding of the late twelfth and Ayyubid additions.

Between Aleppo and Idlib lie the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria, inscribed in 2011: the Wikipedia tourism article counts about 700 settlements of the first to the seventh centuries, abandoned between the eighth and the tenth, with temples, cisterns, baths and early churches. The church of Saint Simeon Stylites, Serjilla and al-Bara are the best known, and UNESCO recorded severe damage at Saint Simeon during the war.

The tentative list adds twelve more, among them the norias, the water wheels, of Hama on the Orontes, Ugarit, Ebla, Apamea, Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi, Tartus and the island of Arwad off the coast.

What the coast offers

The Mediterranean shore is short and lined with sandy bays and rocky headlands. Britannica describes Latakia, surrounded by farmland, as a tourist centre for its seaside, and through the war years hotels on the coast at Tartus and Latakia kept a domestic trade when foreign visitors had gone. The remains of Ugarit lie close to Latakia, the castle of Qal'at Salah El-Din in the hills behind it, and the island of Arwad off Tartus; Ugarit, Tartus and Arwad are all on the tentative list.

When the seasons suit travel

The coast and the western mountains have a Mediterranean climate with a dry season from May to October, hot summers and mild winters, and most of their rain falls between November and May. Inland the extremes widen. Damascus and Aleppo average summer highs in the mid-30s Celsius and winter lows of 1 to 4 degrees, snow can fall away from the coast, and at Tadmur and Deir ez-Zor summer maxima reach the upper 30s and low 40s, with extremes in the mid to upper 40s. Sandstorms are common in the desert in February and May. Spring and autumn fall between those extremes, and the ministry's 2025 figures show arrivals spreading beyond the summer into October.

Muslims keep the fast of Ramadan and Christians keep Christmas and Easter; the two Eids, Christmas, and Easter by both the Eastern and the Western calendars are public holidays.

How visitors cross the country

Damascus and Aleppo have international airports, with domestic airports at Latakia, Qamishli, Deir ez-Zor and Tadmur. Britannica records flights to Arab, other Asian and European countries, with Syrian Arab Airlines flying both domestic and international routes, and the minister listed more air links and the redevelopment of Damascus International Airport among the sector's needs in 2026. From Homs a highway and a railway cross the Homs Gap to the Lebanese port of Tripoli, and railways link Aleppo with Damascus and Latakia. UNHCR recorded refugees returning from Lebanon through the Jdaidet Yabous crossing in July 2025, and counted 577 deaths from unexploded ordnance across Syria in 2025 up to early December, warning that unexploded ordnance continues to threaten lives.

Britannica notes that most tourists before the war came from Arab countries, Iran and Turkey, drawn by the relatively mild summer climate and popular entertainment, and that a much smaller share came from Europe and the United States. The 2025 figures from the ministry repeat that pattern with Turkey and Jordan in the lead.