Aleppo hides its deepest history off the Citadel mound: a Byzantine cathedral swallowed by a 12th-century madrasa, a 1354 asylum treating patients with water and music, and an Ottoman railway hall that once fed the Orient Express.
Opened 1931, entered between giant basalt guardian figures from the 9th-century BC palace of Tell Halaf. Halls hold Mari statuary, Ugarit alphabet tablets and finds from Ebla; partially reopened after 2018 repairs.
Founded 1354 by Mamluk governor Arghun al-Kamili as a hospital for the mentally ill, using running water, courtyards, daylight and music as therapy centuries before Europe. Patient cells and fountain basins survive.
Facing the Great Mosque's western wall, this school was the 6th-century Cathedral of Saint Helena. Six Byzantine acanthus-capital columns still stand inside the prayer hall, absorbed into the madrasa Nur al-Din founded in 1149.
The best-preserved of Aleppo's medieval city gates, rebuilt in 1256 by the Ayyubid ruler an-Nasir Yusuf and restored in 1509 by Mamluk sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri. The bent entrance passage and rampart stonework are intact.
Opened 1911 by the Armenian Mazloumian brothers, Syria's first grand hotel. Agatha Christie wrote part of Murder on the Orient Express in room 203; T.E. Lawrence's unpaid bar bill still hangs framed near the old reception.
Austrian architect Charles Chartier built this striped limestone-and-basalt tower in 1898-99 for Ottoman governor Rae'f Pasha, marking Aleppo's move to European civic timekeeping. Restored after shelling damage in 2016.
The 1912 Baghdadbahn terminus, where the Taurus Express from Istanbul handed passengers onward toward Mosul and Baghdad. The stone hall keeps its original ticket windows, iron platform canopy and German-made clock.
Aleppo's late-Ottoman extramural quarter, laid out from the 1870s with European-style apartment blocks and consulates, beside the Public Park opened in 1949 along the channelled Quweiq river.
The Christian quarter spread north of the walls from the 15th century as Aleppo's trade boomed. Beit Ghazaleh, a 17th-century merchant mansion with reliefs carved by the sculptor Khachadur Bali, anchors its stone alleys.
Recorded from the 15th century and rebuilt in 1616, named for the martyrs of Sebaste. Its 1708 Last Judgement triptych and the parish registers of 1915 genocide survivors make it the core of Armenian Aleppo's memory.
The 1757 courtyard mansion of the Ajiqbash merchant family, its iwan covered in carved figural scenes and Arabic inscriptions rare in Islamic-era domestic art. Rooms now show Aleppine costume, wedding customs and crafts.
Aleppo's oldest surviving public square, named as a firewood market from the 12th century and repaved after the 2016 fighting. Beit Wakil on its edge lost its 1603 painted 'Aleppo Room' panelling to a Berlin museum in 1912.