Aleppo: Before now

Recently I heard of the war going on in Aleppo a city in Syria. I was then curious to know what the city was like before the war. Five years ago it was one of the most beautiful city one would come across. But now it is all in ruins. The city had spent centuries evolving into the country's largest industrial and commercial hub and is one of the oldest inhabited cities in human history. It was added to UNESCO's World Heritage

Aleppo is a city in Syria, serving as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate . For centuries, Aleppo was the Syrian region's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third-largest, after Constantinople and Cairo .
With an official population of 2,132,100 (2004 census), it was Syria's largest city and also one of the largest cities in the Levant before the advent of the Syrian Civil War . Aleppo is an ancient metropolis, and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world; it may have been inhabited since the 6th millennium BC. Aleppo appears in historical records as an important city much earlier than Damascus.

Since the Battle of Aleppo started in 2012, the city has suffered massive destruction, 250,000 people have been trapped in the besieged city, thousands more have died, there are no more working hospitals , and airstrikes have left ancient mosques and homes under blankets of dust and rubble. and has been the worst-hit city in the Syrian civil war.

The Umayyad mosque was one of Aleppo's most famous mosques and also one of its most beautiful. UNESCO described it as "one of the most beautiful mosques in the Muslim world.But now, parts of the 11th-century​ mosque are now nothing more than a pile of rubble. State news agencies blamed rebels for its collapse, but rebel forces blamed government artillery fire.

The oldest hotel in Syria, the Baron Hotel, was forced to close its doors in 2014. There had been no paying guests for the previous two years as the frontline separating government and rebel forces had been drawn just metres from the building. The hotel had accommodated some of history's most famous names — from American billionaire David Rockefeller to Lawrence of Arabia. Agatha Christie also wrote part of 'Murder on The Orient Express' in room 203. 

Tourist attractions
Aleppo Citadel
Old City
Aleppo Souk
Dead City of Serjilla
Great Mosque of Aleppo
Turkish Bath
Aleppo Town Centre
Bab Al Faraj Square
Aleppo Museum
General Park
Ebla
Villa Rose
Al Khosrofieh Mosque
Al Tawheed Mosque
Madrassa Halawiyya