Latakia
— — the port that has watched every empire pass.
Not only on a wall.
“Syria's principal port, on a short headland of the Mediterranean coast. Founded by the Seleucids in the fourth century BC as Laodicea, it has carried Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Mamluk, and Ottoman ships at the same quay. The corniche faces west; the cafés on it serve coffee with cardamom and look out at the same horizon Strabo described. Inland, the slopes climb toward the Alawite mountains and the tobacco fields that gave the dark Latakia leaf its name. from the studio
Latakia, 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.
Latakia sits on a headland of the Syrian Mediterranean coast, 348 kilometres northwest of Damascus and about 186 kilometres south of the Turkish port of Iskenderun. It is the capital of Latakia Governorate and Syria's principal seaport, with a population of roughly 400,000. The city was founded around 346 BC by Seleucus I Nicator as Laodicea ad Mare, one of four sister cities named for his mother. The Alawite Mountains rise immediately to the east, separating the coastal plain from the interior and the Orontes valley.
Four granite columns from a Roman tetrapylon still stand in the old quarter, the surviving fragment of a monumental arch built under Septimius Severus around AD 183. Other Roman remains lie scattered through the city, including a small theatre south of the centre. The port itself was rebuilt by the Romans on Seleucid foundations and has been continuously used since. Inland, ruins of Ugarit at Ras Shamra, 16 kilometres north, hold the alphabet tablets that gave the region its earliest written language around 1400 BC.
The Mediterranean climate runs warm and dry in summer, mild and wet in winter, with the Alawite Mountains catching the rain off the sea. Tobacco grown on those slopes is cured slowly over open fires of oak and pine; the smoke gives Latakia leaf its dark colour and the distinct campfire aroma valued by pipe smokers worldwide. The cured leaf has been a regional export since the Ottoman period and the city's name is now attached to the tobacco wherever it is sold.