City by city
Where you can go, city by city
What each place is, whether it's currently safe to visit, and how long it's worth. Damascus and the west function largely normally for visitors; other areas do not — this is the honest split as of October 2026, so check again before you travel. Times are driving times, which in Syria means checkpoints included.
Maaloula
A village of blue-washed houses stacked against a cliff, and one of the last places on earth where a Western dialect of Aramaic — the everyday language of the Roman Levant — is still spoken at home. The monasteries of Mar Sarkis and Mar Taqla were badly damaged in the war and have been partly restored. A narrow gorge splits the rock behind the village and can be walked.
- Hear the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic at the convent
- Walk the gorge between the two monasteries
- Status
- Open, partly restored
- Worth
- Half day
- From Damascus
- 1 hour
- Best time
- Any season; cold in winter
This is the underrated risk. Contamination is widespread in former front-line areas, around Palmyra, and along old defensive lines. The rule is simple and absolute: stay on hard-surfaced roads and worn paths, never enter a ruined building or an open field, and never take a shortcut across ground you have not seen someone else walk.