The world’s oldest city has been lived in for 11,000 years, but it isn’t Jerusalem or Athens.
Damascus was founded in the third millennium BC, with excavations on the city’s outskirts showing it was inhabited as early as 8,000 to 10,000 BC.
The capital of Syria, Damascus, was shaped by some of the world’s great civilizations, including the Roman, Byzantine, Greek and Islamic.
Damascus was the capital of the Umayyad Empire, with Islam a “prevailing” influence, though traces of Rome and Byzantium’s influence still remain in the city’s layout, according to UNESCO.
The ancient city tops World Population Review‘s list of the oldest cities on the planet, which are still inhabited.
The publication dates Damascus to 10,000BC, followed by Jericho (9,000BC), Plovdiv in Bulgaria (7,000BC), Iran’s Susa (7,000BC) and Faiyum in Egypt (5,200BC).
Other cities on World Population Review’s list include Aleppo, Byblos, Athens, Argos, Beirut and Sidon.
UNESCO hails Damascus’s “impressive” Roman city walls and “incomparable” Great Mosque, praised as a masterpiece of Umayyad architecture.
According to UNESCO, the Great Mosque’s position at the heart of the city’s Graeco-Roman grid plan formed an “exemplary” model of the Arab-Muslim world.
Damascus also boasts Ottoman palaces, mosques, tombs, and a citadel, all of which survived the Medieval period.
Despite its historical and architectural appeal, Damascus is not recommended to travellers. Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office advises against all travel to Syria due to the country’s “unpredictable” security and ongoing conflict.
An Israeli airstrike on Sunday (November 10) hit a residential building in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, with the Syrian Defence Ministry saying seven civilians were killed, according to state news agency SANA. Tel Aviv didn’t immediately comment on the strike, which may have been targeting Hezbollah.
Syria has also been in the grip of a deadly civil war since 2011 after an uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Damascus itself was the setting for a brutal battle in 2012 when thousands of rebels descended on the city before they were forced to retreat by opposition forces. Parts of the city were decimated after three weeks of fierce fighting.
