Hammam Nur al-Din

Hammam Nur al-Din is a public bathhouse in Souq al-Buzuriyah, the spice and sweets market of Old Damascus, close to the Umayyad Mosque. It was founded in the 12th century under the Zengid ruler Nur al-Din and is among the oldest bathhouses in the city. Like other traditional hammams, it is laid out as a sequence of rooms from cool to hot, beginning with a domed hall where bathers rest, with small glass openings in the domes that let in daylight. For centuries it has been a social gathering place as well as a bath. The Ancient City of Damascus is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Hammam Nur al-Din was documented as part of Project Anqa, a collaboration between CyArk, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and Carleton University, funded by the UK-based Arcadia Foundation. Responding to the catastrophic loss of heritage in the Middle East, the project trained local heritage professionals in digital documentation. With the UNESCO Office for the Preservation of Syrian Cultural Heritage, CyArk trained Syrian heritage professionals in Lebanon in 2016 and 2017, and they went on to document six sites in Damascus.