Syria: Regions, Cities & Travel Guide

What is Syria known for?

The capital, Damascus, is counted among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and the land around it has been the seat of many empires. It sits in the Levant, on the Eastern Mediterranean, between the coast and the deserts of West Asia. Arabic is the common language.

History, more than anything, is what the country is known for.

Where is Syria?

Syria lies in West Asia, on the Eastern Mediterranean, in the region long known as the Levant. Its western edge is a coastline on the Mediterranean Sea, a relatively narrow and greener strip backed by higher ground. Behind that ground the country changes character entirely.

The land opens into wide interior plains and dry steppe, and much of the east is desert that runs on toward Iraq. Most of Syria is arid, and its cities cluster where water and old trade routes have always allowed. Four neighbours frame the land borders.

Turkey runs along the north and northwest, Iraq lies to the east and southeast, Jordan sits to the south, and Israel and Lebanon adjoin the southwest. Damascus, the capital, stands inland near the Lebanese border rather than on the sea. The republic is divided into fourteen governorates in all.

Settlement leans toward the wetter west and the border margins, while the deep interior stays thinly settled. From the Mediterranean shore to the eastern desert, Syria has long been a crossing ground between the sea and the heart of Asia.

What is the history of Syria?

Syria holds some of the longest human history anywhere. Its capital, Damascus, is counted among the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, settled for thousands of years without a break. The wider land has been the site of numerous empires.

In the Levant, between the Mediterranean Sea and the interior of West Asia, it sat on the routes that armies and traders followed for millennia, and one power after another ruled it in turn. That long procession of rulers left its mark across the country. Empire after empire rose, governed from cities like Damascus, and gave way to the next, so the land carries layer upon layer of the past.

The modern state is far younger. The Syrian Arab Republic traces its founding to 1920, when the borders of the modern country began to take shape. It became a republic, divided into fourteen governorates, with Damascus as its capital and largest city.

Old and new sit side by side. Beneath a young republic lies one of the oldest inhabited landscapes on earth, centred on a capital that has never been abandoned.

What is Syria like?

Everyday culture in Syria is Arab and deeply rooted. Arabic is the common language, and the country's own name, the Syrian Arab Republic, places that identity at its centre. The past is never far.

Because the land has been settled for so long and ruled by so many empires, its towns and cities carry a heritage that reaches back thousands of years, with Damascus, among the oldest inhabited cities on earth, at the head of it. Syria's place in the Levant has shaped its character. The country stands between the Mediterranean Sea and the interior of West Asia, and it has long absorbed and blended what passed through it, from language to craft to cooking.

Trade and empire did the mixing. Centuries of movement along these routes left a culture that faces both the sea and the desert, western and eastern at once. Damascus sets the tone for much of it.

As the capital and largest city, and one of the great old centres of the Arab world, it gathers the country's cultural life. Old and lived-in, that culture belongs to a land that has rarely stood still.

What is the climate of Syria?

Syria has two climates in one country. Along the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the coast is mild and wetter, with warm summers and soft, rainy winters in the Mediterranean pattern. The interior is another world.

Inland, the plains and desert turn hot and dry in summer and colder at night, with little rain reaching far from the sea. East toward Iraq, the land is true desert.

How do you get to Syria?

Syria sits at a crossing of routes. It borders Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon by land, and opens to the west onto the Mediterranean Sea. Damascus, the capital, is the main hub inland.

Roads run out from it to the coast and to the borders, along the same corridors that trade has always used. The Mediterranean coast gives the country its sea approach.