Airline & Holiday Information

Flights to Damascus and other destinations in the Middle East make it easy to reach exotic cities and diverse peoples whose ways of life differ often dramatically from our own.

The very name Damascus conjures up images of bazaars, magic carpets, minarets and all the other associations with the mystic Middle East so beloved of orientalists.

Capital of Syria, Damascus is one of the world’s oldest cities, with a huge, covered souk and a labyrinthine complex of narrow streets at its heart. The old city centre is where any visitor will find all his dreams and expectations of what the Middle East should be like fully realised. It is packed with markets, mosques and various shrines, with the Omayyad Mosque with its high encircling walls the most famous of all. Take the weight off your feet with a refreshing glass of the local beverage in a tea house behind the mosque, or have a Turkish bath to wipe away the grime of what can be a rather dirty city.

Large sections of the city are poor and overcrowded, but the Al Mouhajarine district is dominated by modern office blocks, in a trend seen elsewhere in other great cities in the region such as Istanbul, Beirut and Cairo. This often sharp intrusion of the modern world of corporate capitalism into traditional cityscapes may not be too easy on the eye, but it does highlight the fact that ancient and ultra-modern can usually happily co-exist in the same metropolis and indeed create an arresting contrast.