Damascus
— — a city older than the words for it.
Not only on a wall.
“One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, set on the Barada River where the mountains step down to the Syrian desert. The Old City still follows a Roman street plan, with the eastern and western gates at the ends of the Via Recta, the Street called Straight in the Book of Acts. The Umayyad Mosque rises at its centre. The walls have stood, in some form, for three thousand years.
Damascus, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Damascus lies at about 680 metres above sea level on the Ghouta plain, watered by the Barada River as it descends from the Anti-Lebanon range. The city is the capital of Syria and one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban sites on earth, with archaeological evidence of settlement going back to the third millennium BCE. The metropolitan area holds roughly 2.5 million people. The walled Old City covers about 130 hectares and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979 for its layered Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman fabric.
The Umayyad Mosque, completed in 715 CE on the site of a Roman temple of Jupiter and a later Byzantine basilica dedicated to John the Baptist, anchors the Old City. Its three minarets include the Minaret of Jesus, where local tradition holds that Christ will descend at the end of days. The Citadel of Damascus on the northwest corner of the walls dates in its present form to Ayyubid rebuilding under Saladin's brother in 1203. The Via Recta still runs east to west, kinked but recognisable, beneath modern shopfronts.
Damascus has been difficult and dangerous to visit for most of the past fifteen years. The Syrian civil war, beginning in 2011, kept the country under government and Western travel advisories that remained at the highest warning levels through the 2024 political transition. Conditions on the ground continue to change. Travellers should consult their own foreign-ministry guidance before any planning. Damascus International Airport reopened to limited commercial flights in 2024; overland routes from Beirut have run intermittently. The Old City, when accessible, is best walked at the early morning prayer hour.