A Mediterranean coast, snow on the mountains, a green river valley, a vast steppe, and a black basalt plateau. Syria is not the desert most people imagine.
What is Syria's geography like? A narrow, green Mediterranean coast backed by mountains; the fertile Orontes valley behind them; the Euphrates cutting across the northeast; a dry steppe and desert filling the center and south; and the volcanic highlands of Jabal al-Arab in the southwest. Most of the population lives in the western third.
Each landscape has its own page: what it looks like, what lives there, the towns and sites along it, and when to see it.
Latakia, Tartus, and 180 kilometers of beaches, citrus groves, and fishing harbors most travelers never hear about.
Forested slopes, mountain villages, and the Crusader castles that watched the coast from above.
The river that flows the wrong way, and the drained marsh that became Syria's breadbasket.
A green ribbon through the northeast, lined with Bronze Age cities and the dams that changed everything.
The Badia: half the country, Bedouin territory, and the setting for Palmyra.
Black basalt hills, vineyards, Roman ruins, and the Druze heartland.
Every major Syrian city sits on a river, and water, more than oil, is the resource that will shape the country's next century.
One of the two rivers of Mesopotamia, dammed at Tabqa to create Lake Assad, the largest body of water in the country.
The "rebel river" that flows north instead of south, past Homs and Hama's famous waterwheels.
The short river that made Damascus an oasis, and the reason a city exists here at all.
Upstream dams in Turkey, years of drought, and war damage to infrastructure have left Syria water-stressed. It is the defining environmental issue.
The Euphrates tributary that watered the earliest farming villages on earth, now running dry in summer.
Lake Homs and the Ghab marshes, drained for farmland in the 20th century, are being partially restored.
Syria's highest point, snow-covered from December to April, sacred in the Bible, shared with Lebanon.
The Jabal an-Nusayriyah, forested and green, home to Slenfeh and the Crusader castles.
The volcanic plateau of the south, cool in summer and a refuge in every era.
Syria has a Mediterranean climate on the coast, a continental one inland, and a desert one in the east. The same month can be pleasant in one and punishing in another.
The best season almost everywhere. Wildflowers on the steppe, green hills, mild cities.
Hot and dry inland, humid on the coast. Damascus is bearable in the evenings; the desert is not.
The second-best season. Warm, clear, and the olive and grape harvests.
Cold and often wet in the west, snow on Hermon and the coastal range, mild in the desert.
Syria was once home to lions, cheetahs, and ostriches. Most are gone, but more survives than you'd think, and the reserves that protect it are slowly recovering.
Rediscovered near Palmyra in 2002 after being thought extinct in the wild for decades. A conservation story still unfolding.
Reintroduced to the Talila reserve near Palmyra, the first protected area of its kind in the Syrian desert.
The Fronloq and Slenfeh forests, the last remnants of the Levant's Mediterranean woodland, and the country's main hiking country.
Mostly by area, but not by population. Over half the land is steppe or desert, but most Syrians live in the green western third, along the coast, in the mountains, and in the river valleys.
Yes. Mount Hermon and the coastal mountains get snow every winter, and Damascus sees it most years. Bloudan and Hermon have ski areas.
Mount Hermon, at 2,814 meters, on the border with Lebanon.
March to May and September to November for the country as a whole. Summer for the coast, winter for the desert.