What would Damascus look like as a wardrobe? Inspired by New York City-based illustrator Natasha Polozenko, Nadine Ghannoum brings the idea to life in Wearing My City’s Architecture, reworking details from the city’s historic houses, palaces and monuments into animated digital outfits. The result is part fashion fantasy, part architectural tour and a very good excuse to look closer at some of Damascus’ most fascinating spaces.
Al-Akkad House
Tucked inside the winding streets of Old Damascus, Beit al-Aqad is an 18th-century mansion that has had quite the second act. Once the home of the wealthy al-Aqad family, the house was left derelict for around 50 years before the Danish Institute in Damascus took it over in 1997.
What followed was a meticulous restoration carried out by Danish and Syrian architects, bringing its courtyard, reception rooms and intricate Damascene details back to life. The building eventually became a cultural and academic hub, hosting exhibitions, artists and scholars — a reminder that historic houses in Damascus have rarely been just houses.
Khan Asaad Pasha & Al-Azem Palace
Two of Damascus’ grandest Ottoman-era landmarks, both tied to As’ad Pasha al-Azem, come with very different personalities.
Built in 1752, Khan Asaad Pasha was essentially the five-star hotel of its day — except it was designed for travelling merchants and their caravans. Set around a vast courtyard topped by eight domes, the khan once offered traders somewhere to sleep, store their goods and do business in the middle of the bustling Bzouriyyeh Souk.
Nearby, Al-Azem Palace was built a few years earlier, beginning in 1749, as the governor’s private residence. Its two main sections — the haremlik for family life and the selamlik for receiving guests — reveal how Damascene homes were designed around privacy, hospitality and hierarchy. Even more interestingly, Al-Azem reused older columns, masonry and timber, quite literally building pieces of Damascus’ past into its walls.
Bimaristan Al-Nouri & Khaled Al-Azem House
One of these places was built for healing; the other was built for one of Syria’s most prominent political families. Together, they show just how much history is packed into Damascus’ architecture.
Bimaristan Al-Nouri dates to 1154, when the Zangid ruler Nur al-Din established the hospital and medical school in the Old City. It offered free treatment and included care for mental illness, making it an important early example of institutional medicine. Its elaborate entrance, central courtyard and iwans are still remarkably intact, and part of the building now houses the Museum of Arab Medicine and Science.
Then there is Khaled Al-Azem House, an expansive Ottoman-era residence in Souq Sarouja dating to the late 18th or early 19th century. Its architecture is almost a catalogue of Damascene craftsmanship: black-and-white stonework, painted wooden ceilings, marble pools, fountains and courtyards. The house is divided into selamlik and harem sections, with the latter now serving as the Damascus Heritage House museum.
Umayyad Mosque & Al-Azem Palace
If Damascus had a fashion house of its own, the Umayyad Mosque would probably be its maximalist collection.
Built by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid I between 705 and 715, the mosque occupies a site with an unusually layered past. Before it became one of Islam’s most important architectural monuments, the site was home to an Aramean temple, a Roman temple and later a Christian church. Even today, the shrine associated with St John the Baptist remains inside the mosque.
And al-Walid clearly knew he had made something special. He is reported to have told the people of Damascus: “You pride yourselves against others on four things: your air, your water, your fruits and your pigeons, and I wished to add you a fifth one, which is this Mosque.”
Then there is the decoration: marble, intricate geometric details and shimmering gold mosaics depicting an otherworldly landscape.
Pair that with the ornate interiors of Al-Azem Palace, and you get two very different expressions of Damascus’ love for pattern, colour and theatrical detail — one sacred, one domestic, both unmistakably of the city.
Al-Ajami House
Built around 1860 in Damascus’ Kanawat district, Beit Al Ajami was once an affluent family home before falling into serious disrepair. After returning to Damascus following two decades in Canada, Syrian art collector Lina Attar Ajami and her husband spent a year and a half searching for a house to restore. When they finally walked into this one, it was “destroyed and dirty” — but Ajami says, “I felt a serenity that took over my heart.”
Working with Syrian architect Michel Zayat, the couple spent nearly a decade bringing it back to life, carefully preserving its original layout while restoring its damaged details. At its centre is the traditional ard el-dyar, an open courtyard framed by marble flooring, lemon and jasmine trees and bougainvillea.
Inside, historic details meet contemporary Syrian art, but Ajami never wanted the house to feel like a museum. “I wanted it to be a home,” she says, “a place we want to come back to.” Completed in 2018, Beit Al Ajami became more than a restoration project — it became a way of holding on to home.
A City You Can Wear
From centuries-old courtyards to Ottoman caravanserais and mosaics that still catch the light, Damascus has never been short on visual language. Wearing My City’s Architecture simply translates that language into another medium — turning stone, marble, wood and tile into clothes you could almost imagine walking through the city in.
It’s a reminder that in Damascus, architecture isn’t just something you visit. It’s something you live with, inherit, remember — and, apparently, wear.
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