Been there | Damascus Profile

Hamidiyyeh bazaar, Damascus
Photo: Bassem Tellawi/AP

Age with beauty

Sakhr

Almost untouched by tourists, but immensely accessible, Damascus is the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. The sprawling old city, with its narrow passageways and ancient houses - a Unesco World Heritage site - is still a living city. Like a peaceful, un-war-ravaged mini-Jerusalem. And the biblical references are here, too - the Road to Damascus, the street called straight. About a third of the old city is Christian. But the new development takes place outside the walls of the old city. The pollution congested, wild Cairo-lite is a world away from Old Damascus.

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