Baron Hotel

Baron Hotel (also Baron's Hotel, Hotel Baron or Le Baron), is the oldest hotel in Syria and the region. It is located in downtown Aleppo, on Baron street of the Aziziyeh area, next to the National Museum of Aleppo.

In November 2014 the hotel was forced to close its doors as the Syrian civil war gripped the city, with the front line separating government and rebel forces just metres away from the building. For over two years there had been almost no paying guests.

The fate of the historical artefacts inside the building and the giant Stephens thermometer, with French script, affixed to the front wall since 1917, is unknown.

History

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 eastern Anatolia) 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.