Damascus Things to Do Tips by maykal

Of course, no visitor to Damascus can miss the Souq al-Hamidiyyeh, which stretches between the citadel and the Omayyad Mosque. At the citadel end, there are mainly tourist shops, and moneychangers, but the further into the souq, the less hassle you're likely to get. A whole maze of souqs branch off from the main one, but it's not too hard to find your way round. I thought it strange at first how the same types of shops tend to cluster together. I mean, there's the perfume souq which leads onto the materials souq, and there is even a sticker souq! In one of the smaller clothes souqs, some stalls sell some extremely raunchy underwear, and it was interesting to note that the raunchier the underwear, the more heavily veiled the customers were!!!

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The square which separates the end of the Souq al-Hamidiyyeh from the Omayyad Mosque is quite new. It used to be the continuation of the souq until a couple of decades ago, until the president had it bulldozed so he could reach the mosque by car. (It also meant that tanks could get inside the old city in case of an uprising, but we don't talk about that....) The impressive Roman arch used to be part of a Roman temple before the mosque was built - the arch was the outer limit of the temple which was much larger than the mosque.

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Other Contact: In spring, several stalls in the

The Azem Palace is another major attraction of the old city. It is located just behind the souq al-Bizuriyyah (the sweet souq), and is now a museum of Syrian culture. Some displays are nice, some amusing (though not meant to be) and some awful. The National Museum, in the new city, is interesting but badly labelled and stuffy. The gardens are quite nice though. They are both favourite places for school outings, hence the photo.

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Other Contact: For a foreign tourist it costs 2

If you are at all interested in Arabic medicine and medical history, the you shouldn't miss the Bimaristan an-Nuri. A former hospital, it is now a museum displaying all sorts of weird natural remedies and medical equipment centuries old (some of it looks as if it came from a torture room rather than a hospital!).

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Directions: Difficult to explain...you have to follow your nose through the souqs of the old city and hope for the best really!
Other Contact: As usual, it costs £200 Syrian p