Aleppo Before and After the War: 30 Photo Comparisons

30 Before & After Pics Of Aleppo Reveal What War Did To Syria’s Largest City

Aleppo, Syria's largest city before the war and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, was the scene of the longest and most destructive urban battle of the Syrian civil war. Fighting began in July 2012 and ended on 22 December 2016, when the last buses carried rebel fighters and civilians out of the eastern districts and government forces took full control.

The photographs below put the cost of those four and a half years side by side. Each pair shows a place as it looked before the war and the same spot after the fighting: the medieval covered markets, the courtyard of the Great Mosque, the square beneath the Citadel, churches in the old Christian quarter, ordinary streets and even a modern shopping centre. Most of the pairs were assembled and shared by the Facebook page of Olympia Restaurant, an Aleppo business, and were later gathered into a widely shared compilation by Bored Panda in December 2016, as the evacuation was under way.

The captions explain what each place was and, where it is known, when and how it was destroyed. Some locations cannot be identified with certainty from the photos alone, and we say so where that is the case.

The battle of Aleppo in brief

Rebel fighters entered Aleppo on 19 July 2012, and the city quickly split into a government-held west and a rebel-held east, with the front line running through the historic centre. For four years the two halves fought street by street. Government and Russian air strikes pounded the east, while rebel shelling hit the west, and both sides used tunnel bombs in the Old City.

The human cost is still debated, but it was enormous. The Violations Documentation Center counted at least 31,000 deaths in Aleppo province between July 2012 and mid-December 2016, around three quarters of them civilians. The figure of 20,000 displaced that circulated in late 2016 was far too low: hundreds of thousands of residents fled during the war, about 130,000 civilians left the eastern districts during the final offensive alone, and the Red Cross said around 34,000 people were evacuated in the last week.

The heritage loss was just as heavy. The Ancient City of Aleppo has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986. An estimated 30 per cent of it was destroyed, and tens of thousands of buildings across the city were damaged or levelled.

The Citadel and the square beneath it

The Citadel sits on a mound at the heart of the Old City, and the open square below it was where tourists, families and café owners met. It was also close to the front line for years. Government troops held the Citadel while rebels held neighbourhoods around it, and both sides dug tunnels and set off huge explosions underneath enemy positions. These pairs show how the buildings ringing the Citadel were flattened.

A landscaped square with a palm-shaded pool on the edge of the Old City, once a popular meeting place for families. In the later picture the paving is broken, the gardens are bare and the buildings behind are gutted, with the walls of the Citadel visible at right.

The garden approach below the Citadel, planted with flowers and palms. The bottom picture shows the railings torn down and the path blocked by blocks of stone thrown out by explosions nearby.

This lit façade with palm trees appears to be the Carlton Citadel Hotel, opposite the Citadel's entrance. The building started life as the National Hamidi Hospital, became a hotel licensed in 2011 and was brought down on 8 May 2014 by explosives placed in a tunnel beneath it, an attack claimed by the rebel Islamic Front.

The view from the Citadel's gatehouse over the square below at sunset, with cafés lit up. The later picture shows the same view in daylight: the cafés gone and the surrounding buildings reduced to shells.

A large stone public building with towers, across a busy pedestrian square near the Citadel. Afterwards most of the building has collapsed, leaving a broken shell above a field of rubble.

A stone mansion from the late Ottoman or early 20th-century period, standing close to the Citadel walls. In the later picture the upper floor and balconies have been torn away, though the shell still stands.

Satellite images of the area just south of the Citadel. The second, dated 14 December 2014, uses red arrows to mark where whole blocks had disappeared, several of them reportedly by tunnel bombs dug beneath government positions.

Palm trees in the plaza in front of the Citadel, with its walls glowing in the sun. The later image shows the same view with the palms gone, a few dead trunks and bare earth.

The stepped entrance to the Citadel of Aleppo, one of the oldest and largest castles in the world, with a girl walking in the square. The site goes back to the first millennium BC or earlier; most of what visitors see today dates from the 13th century. Later the square in front is covered in debris.

The covered souqs

Aleppo's medieval markets, most of them dating back to the 14th century, formed a maze of vaulted lanes selling soap, spices, gold, carpets and cloth. They were part of the UNESCO-listed Ancient City and a living workplace for thousands of traders. When fighting reached the Old City in September 2012, large sections were burnt and collapsed.

Aleppo's covered souqs, often counted as the largest historic covered market in the world at about 13 kilometres, were lined with carpet, soap and textile sellers. Fighting reached the market in late September 2012, and fire and shelling left long stretches of it dark and burnt out.

A restored, lamp-lit section of the souq with wooden shop shutters under stone vaults. The later image, taken in the same passage, shows the shutters gone, the walls scorched and the floor covered in fallen masonry.

A carved stone façade with a double staircase, typical of the grand Ottoman-era houses of the Old City. The same corner later shows only heaps of dressed stone, a reminder that many buildings were not just damaged but brought down entirely.

An events hall built around a courtyard pool, lit up for a banquet. The comparison shows the same space after the fighting, its roof and walls broken and the floor buried under debris.

The Great Mosque of Aleppo

The Great Mosque, also called the Umayyad Mosque of Aleppo, was begun around 715 and rebuilt over the following centuries. Rebels took it in January 2013, and it changed hands in heavy fighting. Its Seljuk-era minaret, completed in 1094 and one of the city's best-known landmarks, was destroyed on 24 April 2013.

The courtyard of the Great Mosque of Aleppo at dusk, with its 11th-century minaret on the right. The minaret, built in 1090, was destroyed on 24 April 2013, and the later picture shows the courtyard without it.

The famous patterned marble courtyard of the Great Mosque, a site that grew from a mosque begun in the early 8th century and rebuilt mostly between the 11th and 14th centuries. Afterwards sandbags, debris and broken structures cover the paving.

Another view of the Great Mosque, showing the domed fountain and the minaret behind it. In the later image the fountain still stands but the minaret has gone, and the courtyard is littered with rubble.

An ornate prayer-hall doorway hung with a chandelier, most likely inside the Great Mosque. The later photograph, stamped with a 2012 date, shows the doorway blackened by fire and the wall broken open.

A shaded arcade with worshippers resting between the arches. The after picture shows the same arches burnt and surrounded by fallen stone.

Churches, homes and city streets

The damage was not limited to famous monuments. Aleppo was a city of roughly two million people before the war, with Christian quarters, traditional courtyard houses, modern apartment blocks and shopping centres. These images show neighbourhoods and streets where ordinary life simply stopped.

This twin-spired church at night appears to be the Maronite Cathedral of Saint Elias in the old Christian quarter of al-Jdayde, with a statue in the square in front. Later the square is empty and strewn with stones, the buildings around it shuttered and damaged.

The richly decorated interior of a church in Aleppo, with gilded altar and painted dome. Afterwards the roof has partly collapsed and beams lie across the nave.

A church bell tower in the Old City, tall and clean against a blue sky. In the comparison the tower still stands, but the buildings around it have collapsed into tangled heaps.

The courtyard of a restored traditional courtyard house, the kind converted into boutique hotels before the war. In the after photo, the upper floors have collapsed into the courtyard.

A row of Old City houses with dark wooden bay windows, the projecting balconies typical of Aleppo's traditional architecture. In the later image the garden in front is crossed by broken railings and piles of stone.

A grand stone building near the Citadel, photographed with the minarets of the Old City on the skyline. Afterwards the façade has collapsed into a ridge of rubble, with soldiers picking their way across what used to be the forecourt.

An ordinary shopping street, with an older couple out for a walk among parked cars. The same street years later is a corridor of burnt-out buildings, with soldiers walking through the dust.

A rain-washed street with the Citadel mound in the distance. In the comparison, a minaret still rises over a street of collapsed buildings and rubble.

A wide street leading towards the Citadel, with traffic and pedestrians. The later image shows soldiers walking through the same street, its buildings scorched and the road covered in debris.

A modern shopping centre with escalators and bright shop fronts, a reminder that the destruction was not limited to historic monuments. The later image shows the atrium stripped bare, the escalators wrecked and the floors covered with debris.

A modern multi-storey block in the city centre with shops on the ground floor. The later picture shows the building scarred and windowless, with rubble from a neighbouring collapse spilling into the street.

A busy road running alongside a long stone wall, with yellow taxis and a domed building on the left. The after photo shows soldiers walking along the same road past charred, abandoned buildings.

Aleppo after the battle

When the guns fell silent in the east in December 2016, the city began a slow and uneven recovery. By October 2017, about half a million displaced people and refugees had returned, many to damaged homes. Restoration work on the Great Mosque started around 2017; it reopened for Ramadan prayers in March 2025, and reconstruction work resumed at the end of November 2025.

The political situation changed again eight years after the battle. At the end of November 2024, an offensive led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham swept into Aleppo, and on 8 December 2024 opposition forces took Damascus. Bashar al-Assad left for Moscow, where Russia granted him asylum.

Why these photos still matter

Before-and-after pictures cannot show the people who lived in these streets, the traders who lost family businesses that had run for generations or the children who grew up in basements. What they do show is how quickly centuries of shared history can be erased, and how much rebuilding is left to do. Aleppo's markets, mosques and churches were not just monuments; they were where daily life happened. Remembering what they looked like is part of how a city recovers.

Sources: Wikipedia: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016); Wikipedia: Ancient City of Aleppo; Wikipedia: Great Mosque of Aleppo; Wikipedia: Al-Madina Souq; Enab Baladi, May 2020: Aleppo's Carlton Hotel, from a hospital to a shattered hotel; Wikipedia: Fall of the Assad regime. Photos: Olympia Restaurant, Aleppo, via Bored Panda (compiled by Giedrė Vaičiulaitytė).

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