Hotel Baron, Aleppo, Syria
Posted by: Torgut
N 36° 12.299 E 037° 08.984
37S E 333663 N 4008271
Hotel Baron, in Aleppo, started as Ararat Hotel, built in 1909.
Waymark Code: WMDAH0
Location: Syria
Date Posted: 12/14/2011
Views: 7
Ok, before anything else, take a look at this list of guests: Lawrence of Arabia slept in room 202; King Faisal declared Syria's independence from the balcony in room 215; Agatha Christie wrote the first part of "Murder on the Orient Express" in room 203. Charles de Gaulle, King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Syria's former President Hafez Al Assad, are other notable guests. As well as Dame Freya Stark, Julie Christie, Mr and Mrs Theodore Roosevelt, Kemal Ataturk, Lady Louise Mountbatten, Charles Lindbergh and Yuri Gagarin.
Now, as to the history of the hotel, I took this text from Wikipedia:
"The idea of building a luxury hotel in Aleppo rose at the end of the 19th century. Sometime around 1870, a member of the Armenian family of Mazloumian (from Western Armenia) was on his way to Jerusalem for pilgrimage. While passing through Aleppo which was -even at that time- a cosmopolitan centre of commerce, he noticed how uncomfortable Europeans felt when staying at the traditional caravanserais. Eventually, he decided to build something modern in Aleppo and the result was the Ararat hotel, the first hotel in the region, at the end of the 19th century.
Few years later the Mazloumian Brothers enlarged their business by setting up the new Baron's Hotel. In 1909, amongst the gardens on the outskirts of old Aleppo, they built the first floor of the current building; the second floor followed in 1911, and the third in 1940.
During the French mandate, the street where was Le Baron was built, was named after General Henri Gouraud. After the independence of Syria in 1946, the government decided to rename the street after "Baron" for the fame and the importance of the hotel."
Pitifully the hotel is obviously decadent. When I visited I saw nobody and I truly doubt there was a single guest there. The old owner was there, not the nicest man around.
Hotel's website: (
visit link)