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Dahdah Palace
Unseen behind the high walls within the Old City are hundreds of delightful houses built around courtyards and featuring their own elaborate decoration. Unfortunately, many of these treasures are in a sad state of disrepair, but a loop off Straight St takes in several examples, all of which have benefited from renovation.
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Damascus Souq
South of Umayyad Mosque is the heart of the Damascus Souq, with stretches of stalls devoted to spices, gold, sweets, perfume and fabrics. If you can drag yourself away from the colourful and fragrant displays, there are also wonderful bits of architecture, including numerous khans, or travellers' inns, and a beautiful palace complex.
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Dome of the Clocks
The Dome of the Treasury is counterbalanced by a domed structure on the eastern side of the Umayyad Mosque courtyard, built in the 18th century and known as the Dome of the Clocks because it's where the mosque's clocks used to be kept.
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Dome of the Eagle
At the centre of the Umayyad Mosque Prayer Hall, resting on four great pillars above the transept, is the Dome of the Eagle, so called because it represents the eagle's head, while the transept represents the body and the aisles are the wings.
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Dome of the Treasury
The small octagonal structure on the western side of the Umayyad Mosque courtyard, decorated with intricate 14th-century mosaics and standing on eight recycled Roman columns, is the Dome of the Treasury, once used to keep public funds safe from thieves.
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Eastern Temple Gate
From the Sayyida Ruqayya mosque, follow the lane that runs due east, and turn right (south) at the T-junction leading to a crossroad marked by the half-buried remains of the Eastern Temple Gate. The gate served as the eastern entrance to the compound of the Roman Temple of Jupiter, the site now occupied by Umayyad Mosque.
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Galerie Abdal
A café with an exhibition space above that hosts regularly changing shows.
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Hammam al-Qaimariyya
Hammam al-Qaimariyya, north of Sharia al-Qaimariyya and 300m east of Umayyad Mosque, is popular with locals.
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Hammam az-Zahariyya
Hammam az-Zahariyya, next to the madrassa of the same name, just north of Umayyad Mosque, has been in use since the 12th century. It's clean and well looked after.
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Hammam Bakri
Opposite Beit al-Mamlouka hotel near Bab Touma, is local favourite Hammam Bakri.
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Hammam Nureddin
If you're a male and visit only one hammam in Damascus, make it busy, men-only Hammam Nureddin, accessed from the spice souq that runs between the Umayyad Mosque and Straight St. Founded in the mid-12th century, it is one of the grandest and oldest functioning hammams in the country. It has an excellent heated steam room.
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Hejaz Train Station
A little south and west of Al-Merjeh, the grand Hejaz Train Station, completed in 1917, was the northern terminus of the Hejaz Railway, built to ferry pilgrims to Medina. Compared with the transport palaces of Europe the station is a provincial affair, but the interior has a beautiful decorated ceiling.
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Historical Museum of Damascus
The Historical Museum of Damascus is in an attractive old house with eight richly decorated rooms off a central courtyard. A couple of rooms hold displays of photos and diagrams relating to old Damascus, and there is a superb large-scale model of the Old City, but it's the rooms themselves, decorated in typical Damascene fashion with inlaid marble, carved wood and painted ceilings, that are of greatest interest.
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Imaret Sultan Süleiman
Imaret Sultan Süleiman, another building designed by Sinan (the architect behind Takiyya as-Süleimaniyya), is across the main street. Historian Ross Burns, in Monuments of Syria: A Historical Guide, suggests the Hanbila Mosque is worth a visit for the Crusader columns in the courtyard; however, it's often locked.
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Jamaa al-Jedid
Tucked down narrow Sharia al-Nawa'eer, the 14th-century Jamaa al-Jedid contains the tomb of Ismat al-Din Khatun, wife of first Nureddin and then his successor Saladin. The richly decorated burial chamber is worth a look.
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Jebel Qassioun
That bare rocky rise northwest of the city, Jebel Qassioun, provides a useful orientation tool. It's from the top of this mount that Mohammed is said to have looked down on Damascus and made the observation that opened this chapter. The distinctly urban view today is hardly one of paradise, but it looks stunning at dusk, when the city lights up. There is no public transport to the popular viewing points, so hire a taxi and negotiate for the driver to wait.
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Khan As'ad Pasha
Just beyond the hammam is the grand entrance to Khan As'ad Pasha, arguably the finest and most ambitious piece of architecture in the Old City - a cathedral among khans. Built in 1752 under the patronage of As'ad Pasha al-Azem, it encompasses a vast space achieved through a beautiful arrangement of eight small domes around a larger circular aperture, allowing light to stream in above a circular pool. The domes are supported on four colossal grey-and-white piers that splay into elegant arches.
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Khan az-Zeit
Straight Street is busiest at the western end (Souq Medhat Pasha), where it's largely devoted to shops selling textiles and clothes. There are several old khans in this area, their gates still locked at night. On the north side is the pretty Khan az-Zeit.
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Khan Jakmak
Straight Street is busiest at the western end (Souq Medhat Pasha), where it's largely devoted to shops selling textiles and clothes. There are several old khans in this area, their gates still locked at night. Khan Jakmak is one example.
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Khan Süleiman Pasha
Straight Street is busiest at the western end (Souq Medhat Pasha), where it's largely devoted to shops selling textiles and clothes. There are several old khans in this area, their gates still locked at night. Khan Süleiman Pasha, built in 1732, has a central courtyard that was formerly roofed by two domes.
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Madrassa al-Adeliyya
Two fine old madrassas (schools where Islamic law is taught) face each other across a narrow alley less than 100m northwest of the Umayyad Mosque. Both of these schools were erected in the 13th century during the ascendancy of the Ayyubids. On the left (west), Madrassa al-Adeliyya was begun under Nureddin and continued under a brother of Saladin, Al-Adel Seif ad-Din, whose grave it contains. Its façade is considered a classic example of Ayyubid architecture.
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Madrassa an-Nuri
Just 50m beyond Azem Ecole, Madrassa an-Nuri is easy to pick out because of its crimson domes. The structure is fairly modern and not particularly noteworthy but inside is a surviving part of a madrassa dating from 1172, which houses the mausoleum of Nureddin, the uncle of Saladin, who united Syria and paved the way for his nephew's successes against the Crusaders.
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Madrassa az-Zahariyya
Two fine old madrassas (schools where Islamic law is taught) face each other across a narrow alley less than 100m northwest of the Umayyad Mosque. Both of these schools were erected in the 13th century during the ascendancy of the Ayyubids. Madrassa az-Zahariyya, on the eastern side of the alley, was originally a private house belonging to the father of Saladin.
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Maktab Anbar
Unseen behind the high walls within the Old City are hundreds of delightful houses built around courtyards and featuring their own elaborate decoration. Unfortunately, many of these treasures are in a sad state of disrepair, but a loop off Straight St takes in several examples, all of which have benefited from renovation.
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Mausoleum of Saladin
In the small archaeological garden that lies along the north wall of the Umayyad Mosque are a few columns dating back to the original Roman Temple of Jupiter, and a small white building topped by a rust-red dome, which is the Mausoleum of Saladin. The famed, chivalrous adversary of the Western Crusaders died in Damascus in 1193, and the original mausoleum was erected on this site that same year.
