Eleven thousand years in roughly the right order, from the National Museum to Palmyra, the Dead Cities and Krak des Chevaliers.
A week built in chronological order, starting with the National Museum so the sites make sense afterwards. Damascus, Palmyra, the Dead Cities, Apamea, Krak des Chevaliers and Aleppo. Some legs are long and remote, and this route needs a licensed operator who knows the current road position rather than independent improvisation.
This route is for people who came for the ruins. It runs roughly in chronological order, from the first cities through Rome and Palmyra to the Umayyads and the Crusaders, which turns a week of sites into something that actually makes sense as a sequence.
Start at the National Museum. Ebla, Mari, Ugarit, Palmyra and Dura-Europos all sent their best material to Damascus, and seeing it first means the sites themselves stop being piles of stone and start being places you can read.
Some of these sites are remote, and road conditions govern what is possible in any given week. This route assumes a licensed operator and a driver who knows the current position.
Chronological rather than geographical, which means a little more driving in exchange for a week that tells a story.
Start where the finds are. The Dura-Europos synagogue of 244 CE, rebuilt as a complete room, the Yarhai hypogeum from Palmyra, and the entrance itself, which is the facade of an Umayyad desert palace moved here from near Palmyra.
Straight Street and the Roman grid, Bab Sharqi, then the Umayyad Mosque, where an Aramaean temple became a temple of Jupiter, then a cathedral, then the earliest surviving stone mosque in the world. Four religions on one footprint.
Three hours into the desert to the caravan city between Rome and Persia, damaged in the war and still extraordinary. A long day, and one to arrange in advance rather than improvise.
The Crusader castle T.E. Lawrence called the best preserved in the world, on the ridge above the Homs gap, with the central corridor and its former front lines on the way.
The great colonnaded street at Apamea, nearly two kilometres of Roman road, and the norias of Hama turning on the Orontes. Overnight toward Aleppo.
Hundreds of abandoned Byzantine settlements in the limestone massif between Aleppo and Idlib, including Serjilla and the basilica of Saint Simeon. Churches, houses and olive presses left standing, and nobody living in them for over a thousand years.
The citadel above the old city, the souqs being rebuilt around it, and the soap workshops. The newest layer of the week, and the one still being written.
It is reachable as a long day trip from Damascus with a licensed operator who knows the current road position. It is not a route to attempt independently, and the site itself was damaged during the war.
Hundreds of abandoned Byzantine-era settlements in the limestone hills between Aleppo and Idlib, with churches, houses and olive presses still standing after more than a thousand years without inhabitants.
For the headline sites, yes, at a demanding pace. Ugarit, Ebla and Mari would each add days and some lie in areas that need current advice, which is why this route sends you to their finds in the museum instead.
Six: the ancient cities of Damascus, Bosra and Aleppo, Palmyra, Crac des Chevaliers with Qal'at Salah El-Din, and the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria, which are the Dead Cities. This route reaches four of them.
A licensed operator, certainly, for the remote legs. A guide with archaeological knowledge transforms the week, since several of these sites have little interpretation on the ground.