Continously inhabited longer than any city on earth, also known as Haleb, Aleppo has become famous for the wrong reasons. One of the world’s oldest and largest covered bazaar was the centre of this multi-cultural, multi-faith city. None of those things remain.
Like most sites we visited in Syria in winter of 2005, St Simeon's Monastry was deserted. Simeon sat atop pillars, the highest 15 metres, for 37 years, before his death in 459.
St Simeon's method of devotion was not so unusual in his time, but he became the most famous stylite, and focus of pilgrimage before and after his death.
Old city view during Eid, Aleppo, 2005.
Winter in Aleppo, 2005.
Old buildings by the Citadel, Aleppo.
Banu Umayya Mosque of Aleppo, or Great Mosque. The 1090 minaret was destroyed in the civial war.
Aleppo's shopping district, 2005.
Cinema entrance.
Syria used to be the best place in the region to be a Christian.
Butchers' shop.
Syrian Bond wannabe.
Business signs in Aleppo.
It was my first digital camera, armed with a "colour select" function. Anyway, this old classic is one of many (once) on the streets of Syria.
The entrance to the ancient Aleppo citadel, scene of many seiges over millenia, including some of the worst excesses of the Mongols.
The skyline of old Aleppo, viewed from the citadel.
The front of an old hotel in the heart of old Haleb, almost certainly destroyed,
St Simeons domed hall.