Aleppo General Tips by TheWanderingCamel

Favorite Thing: As you walk around the city, take time to look up at the buildings around you. Intricate woodwork on latticed Ottoman balconies, even when it is a poor state of repair, is a reminder of a bygone time when houses were separated into haramlek (for the women and family members only) and salamlek where guests could be entertained. Then the balconies served as the place from where, unseen from the street, the women could watch the world go by.


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Favorite Thing: Built by the city's Ottoman governor in the 19th century,tThe rather incongruous clock tower in Aleppo is, nevertheless, is a good reference point in the city, more or less marking the division of the old city from the new.

To its south and west lie the museum , Baron Street and the little streets where you will find cheap restaurants and internet cafes and the main bus station. Walking north will bring you to the Jdaide Quarter, while to the south-east you will find the Old city with its souks, hammams, khans and, of course, the Citadel


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Favorite Thing: Whichever way you look, the skyline of Aleppo is speared with minarets. They come in all shapes and sizes, tall, slender witch-hatted Turkish-style ones, veritable forests around some of the newly built mosques on the outskirts of the city in all sorts of fanciful shapes and often gaudily striped and patterned, but it is these old ones that I like best. Solid stone towers with their distinctive round-topped roofs. Some, like these in the streets around the souk and in the heart of the old city are very ancient indeed.


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