Aleppo rewards a thin wallet: its city gates, caravanserai courtyards and Christian-quarter lanes charge nothing, breakfast costs a couple of dollars, and a shared minibus reaches Byzantine ruins for less than a cross-town taxi.
The western gate of the walled city, rebuilt in 1246 over Roman foundations, still opens straight onto a covered souk lane. Free to walk through at any hour, and the small mosque built into the gatehouse costs nothing to enter.
A 1546 caravanserai beside the citadel hill, restored as a handicraft market. Entry to the vaulted courtyard is free and traders rarely push, so you can watch soap-cutting and mother-of-pearl inlay work without buying anything.
A 12th-century church later used as an Ottoman school, now the old city's free cultural centre with rotating photo exhibitions on the reconstruction. The stone-vaulted nave and courtyard are open in daylight hours.
The Christian quarter's lanes of 17th-century merchant mansions cost nothing to explore. The carved facades of Beit Ghazaleh and Beit Achiqbash and the Forty Martyrs Armenian Cathedral are all readable from the street.
Aleppo's cheapest breakfast is served around the 1899 Ottoman clock tower: ful medames, fatteh and hummus ladled from copper pots. A bowl with hot bread and tea runs about 8,000 SYP and stalls open from 06:00.
The Iron Gate quarter grills kebab halabi over charcoal at a fraction of restaurant prices — a skewer with bread and onion-sumac salad lands near 12,000 SYP. The market by the 1509 gate sells pistachios and dried aubergine.
A working-class district market priced for residents rather than visitors: olives, muhammara paste, coarse Aleppo pepper flakes and za'atar bread sold by weight from pavement tables that run for several blocks.
Aleppo's best-known sweet house has been working since 1881. Skip the boxed kilo aimed at gift buyers and order a single piece of halawet el-jibn or mabrumeh at the standing counter with tea, for the price of a snack.
The 5th-century basilica built around the pillar Simeon lived on stands 35 km northwest on a limestone ridge. Shared servees minibuses run from the western garage, so the trip plus ticket costs less than a sit-down dinner.
Below the basilica lies the Byzantine pilgrim town of Telanissos: roofless inns, chapels and rock-cut tombs scattered across olive terraces. Unfenced, unticketed and empty, with long views over the Afrin plain from the edge.
Entered past the basalt Tell Halaf giants on Baron Street, the museum holds finds from Mari, Ugarit and the Ebla clay-tablet archive. Reopened after wartime damage, with a foreigner ticket of only a few thousand pounds.
The 1949 municipal park along the Queiq river is free and at its best at dusk, when families rent plastic chairs for small change and vendors work the plane-tree avenues with lupini beans and sour cherry juice.