Jonathan Sa'adah

Category: Travel

  • The Sacred Mountains: Aramaic Villages and Ancient Pilgrimages

    The third in a series introducing my new photo book “Return to Damascus: A Personal Journey.” This post exploring Syria’s Christian heritage and linguistic treasures in the Qalamoun Mountains.

    From Damascus, the Qalamoun Mountains rise like ancient guardians along the Lebanese border, harboring some of the most unusual Christian cultural and religious treasures in the Middle East. Our journey through these mountains revealed communities that have maintained their distinct identities for over fifteen centuries, preserving traditions that connect directly to the earliest days of Christianity.

    ▲ Barren landscape The scrabbly landscape of the Qalamoun struggles to support even modest olive groves. Unofficial but ancient paths through the mountains tie the area with Lebanon, enabling both smuggling and offering an escape route when needed.

    The Qalamoun region, the northeastern portion of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, stretches from the Barada River Valley southwest of Damascus to the city of Hisyah in the northeast. While we didn’t visit my paternal grandmother’s hometown of Yabrud during our stay in Syria, we made an unforgettable day trip to two of the region’s most significant pilgrimage destinations: Seidnaya and Ma’lula. What we discovered in these mountain communities challenges the widespread stereotypes about religious coexistence in the Middle East.

    Seidnaya: Where Faith Transcends Boundaries

    Our first stop was Seidnaya, a major pilgrimage destination about 20 miles north of Damascus that exemplifies an interfaith reverence that might surprise many people. The Convent of Our Lady of Seidnaya, founded in 547 AD, sits atop a steep hill requiring a challenging climb on foot. According to legend, the Virgin Mary appeared to the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, first as a beautiful gazelle and then as an icon, asking him to found the monastery in her honor.

    What makes Seidnaya truly remarkable is not just its ancient Christian heritage, but the fact that both Christians and Muslims have venerated this site for centuries. The monastery houses the miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary known as the Shaghoura, which legend attributes to Saint Luke the Evangelist. This icon, kept in a dimly lit chamber adorned with silver and gold offerings from pilgrims, draws thousands of visitors annually on September 8th, the Feast of the Nativity of Mary.

    ▲ Stone carvings visible on the cliffs below the back of the Seidnaya monastery. The carvings are thought to be ancient religious motifs serving as protective symbols and devotional markings. The monastery is built high on the cliffs, a wary but dominant presence overlooking the valley below.

    The sight of Muslim pilgrims seeking blessings alongside Christian worshipers, sometimes having their children baptized in gratitude for answered prayers, is an example of the religious tolerance that characterized much of Syria’s history and is struggling to reassert itself now after the civil war. This shared spiritual space represents something that many might find difficult to imagine: a place where religious differences fade before common human yearning for the sacred.

    About 50 nuns lived in the convent when we visited, presided over by an abbess, and the site was bustling with pilgrims from across the region. The monastery’s architecture reflects its layered past, with medieval elements incorporated into later Ottoman and modern reconstructions. Despite the turbulent events that have shaped Syria over the centuries, the convent has continuously served as a center for Orthodox monasticism, maintaining its religious traditions since antiquity.

    For visitors unfamiliar with Eastern Christianity, Seidnaya offers an introduction to Orthodox monasticism that differs significantly from Western Christian traditions. The nuns’ daily rhythm of prayer, the elaborate iconography, and the mystical atmosphere of the ancient buildings create an experience unlike any typically found in North American Christianity. The monastery’s survival through various conquests, political upheavals, and social transformations testifies to the deep roots and resilience of Syria’s Christian communities.

    Ma’lula: The Last Echo of Jesus’s Voice

    ▲ Ma’lula sits close to a pass through two mountains the entrance of which is in the lower right corner of this photograph. Houses have been built up the steep hillsides and fruit orchards and olive groves extend out in the background.

    From Seidnaya, we continued to Ma’lula, a village that represents an extraordinary linguistic and cultural survival story. Located about 56 kilometers northeast of Damascus and perched 4,500 feet above sea level amid towering cliffs, Ma’lula is one of only remaining places (the other is a small nearby village) in the world where Western Neo-Aramaic is still spoken as a living language – the closest surviving connection to the language Jesus Christ spoke nearly two thousand years ago.

    The village’s very name, derived from the Aramaic word “maʿəlā” meaning “entrance,” reflects its position at the opening of a narrow mountain pass between two steep cliffs. This natural gateway has not only shaped the village’s physical character but has also contributed to its cultural preservation. The dramatic landscape, with houses built directly into the steep mountainside and seemingly stacked upon one another, creates a beehive-like structure attached to the edge of the precipice.

    For a visitor such as me, hearing elderly residents greet each other with “Shlomo” (peace) or listening to children recite prayers in Aramaic provides an almost mystical connection to biblical times. The village’s isolation, protected by its challenging geography and distance from major urban centers, allowed this ancient tongue to survive when it disappeared elsewhere. Ma’lula’s residents can still recite the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, offering visitors a direct auditory link to the earliest Christian communities.

    ▲ Monastery of Mar Sarkis sits at the top of the cliffs backing up to hilly plains and the mountains separating Syria from Lebanon. We had just visited the monastery and in the dark, small chapel seen the ancient altar.

    The religious significance of Ma’lula extends beyond its linguistic heritage. The village is home to two Christian religious sites that have served as pilgrimage destinations for centuries. The Greek Orthodox Convent of Saint Thecla, built around the grotto where the legendary saint is said to have lived and died, houses what believers consider to be sacred healing waters. According to tradition, Saint Thecla was an 18-year-old Christian convert who fled from an arranged marriage to a pagan. When Roman soldiers pursued her to the rocky heights near Ma’lula, she prayed for divine intervention, and the mountain miraculously split open, allowing her to escape into the grotto where she spent the rest of her 90-year life.

    The second major religious site is the Monastery of Mar Sarkis (Saint Sergius), a Greek Catholic church that contains what is believed to be one of the oldest Christian altars still in use. Built in the fifth century on the remains of a pagan temple, this monastery features a rare horseshoe-shaped altar table that may date to pre-Constantinian times – before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

    A Linguistic Treasure Under Threat

    What many might not realize is how precarious the survival of Aramaic has become. UNESCO classifies Aramaic as a “severely endangered” language, part of the more than 40% of the world’s languages at risk of extinction. Ma’lula’s population, which once numbered around 10,000, had been reduced to approximately 3,300 inhabitants even before the Syrian Civil War further depleted the community.

    The challenge of language preservation in Ma’lula reflects broader patterns affecting indigenous and minority languages worldwide. Young people often leave the village after completing high school to study in Damascus or abroad, seeking opportunities unavailable in their mountain home. Each departure represents a potential loss for the linguistic community, as Aramaic transmission depends entirely on family and community usage rather than formal education systems.

    The linguistic situation in Ma’lula also reflects the complex religious and ethnic identity of the region. Both Christian and Muslim residents identify ethnically as Arameans, maintaining this ancient identity rather than adopting an Arab ethnic identity like most other Syrians. This shared ethnic identification across religious lines provides another example of how Syrian communities have maintained distinct identities while participating in the broader national culture.

    ▲ Hillside caves There were Orthodox Christian crosses painted on the rocks nearby these caves, which did not at all look abandoned. I didn’t venture into them, but I also didn’t see anyone in the area. These were about 200m above the village of Ma’lula.

    Religious Coexistence in Practice

    Ma’lula’s population demonstrates the kind of religious diversity that characterized much of pre-war Syria. The village included Antiochian Greek Orthodox Christians, Melkite Catholics, and a minority of Sunni Muslims, all sharing the common Aramaic language and Aramean ethnic identity.

    This religious coexistence wasn’t merely tolerance but represented genuine spiritual sharing that transcended sectarian boundaries. The landscape itself tells a story of human adaptation and spiritual resilience, with numerous caves and rock shelters that have provided refuge for Christian martyrs throughout history. The terraced slopes supporting figs, grapevines, and other crops have sustained the community for generations, creating an integrated relationship between human settlement and natural environment.

    For visitors accustomed to more rigid religious boundaries, Ma’lula’s example of interfaith reverence might seem almost impossible. Yet this pattern of shared sacred spaces and mutual respect characterized much of Syria’s religious landscape for centuries. The village represents not an exception but rather a surviving example of the pluralistic traditions that once existed, at times unsteadily, throughout the region.

    A Personal Spiritual Awakening

    While my father rested with our driver below, I climbed one of the rock mountains overlooking Ma’lula. The ascent was challenging but rewarding, offering panoramic views of the ancient settlement with its houses painted in shades of blue and white, clinging to the mountainside like something from a fairy tale. From the summit, I could hear the bells from churches below echoing off the cliff walls.

    ▲ The architecture matches the geology Ma’lula’s homes seemed literally to grow out of the rocks that surrounded the village.

    Sitting on that summit, surrounded by the dramatic landscape and listening to the ancient sounds of worship, I experienced what I can only describe as a visceral connection with Christianity unlike any I had felt before. This wasn’t the intellectual appreciation of religious history or architectural beauty, but something more fundamental – a sense of spiritual continuity that spanned nearly two millennia.

    The experience was particularly meaningful because it occurred in a place where Christianity has maintained an unbroken presence since the earliest centuries of the faith. Unlike many historical Christian sites that have become museums or archaeological curiosities, Ma’lula remains a living religious community where the ancient and contemporary coexist naturally. The prayers I heard were not performances for tourists but part of the ongoing spiritual life of people whose ancestors had worshiped in these same places for over 1,500 years.

    This moment of spiritual recognition occurred in a landscape that itself tells the story of religious persistence. The caves and rock formations that provided shelter for early Christian hermits and martyrs remain visible throughout the area. The integration of human settlement with natural environment creates a sense of organic belonging that connects the present community with its ancient predecessors.

    The War’s Impact and Uncertain Future

    The Syrian Civil War brought devastating challenges to Ma’lula, testing the survival of both its linguistic heritage and religious traditions. In September 2013, the village became a battleground when al-Qaeda-linked jihadist groups, including the al-Nusra Front, attacked the town following a suicide bombing at a government checkpoint. The subsequent battles saw the village change hands multiple times, with reports of churches being burned, looting of religious sites, and threats of forced conversion directed at Christian residents.

    Twelve nuns from the Greek Orthodox monastery were kidnapped in November 2013 and held for two months before being released in a prisoner exchange. The conflict forced most of the village’s approximately 3,300 inhabitants to flee, with only 50 remaining during the heaviest fighting. When Syrian government forces eventually regained control in April 2014, the damage was extensive – monasteries, churches, shrines, and much of the old town had suffered damage, looting, and vandalism.

    Even after the recent fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, the few Christian residents remaining continue to live in fear and uncertainty, reluctant to resume their normal activities. Many have permanently left, joining the broader pattern of Christian emigration from Syria that has reduced the Christian population from approximately 10% before 2011 to less than 3% today.

    Looking Ahead

    The 88 photographs in “Return to Damascus” capture Ma’lula and Seidnaya during a happier time when these communities could pursue their spiritual and cultural traditions without fear. The images document the physical beauty of these mountain settlements and preserve a record of communities that are important cultural treasures.

    In my final blog post, I’ll explore the story of Abd el-Qadir al-Jaza’iri, the Algerian Muslim exile who saved thousands of Damascus Christians during the 1860 massacre – including my own ancestors. This story of courage and humanitarian intervention across religious lines provides another example of the moral complexity and human dignity that have characterized Syrian history, offering a different perspective on the Middle East.

    Through these glimpses into Syria’s cultural and religious heritage, I hope I’ve not just shown the beauty of ancient traditions but also the universal human values of courage, compassion, and spiritual seeking that transcend national and religious boundaries. The story of Ma’lula and Seidnaya is ultimately about the enduring power of place and faith, about communities that have maintained their identity while contributing to the broader human story of spiritual and cultural development.

    “Return to Damascus: A Personal Journey” can be pre-ordered from Phoenicia Publishing at a discount for delivery in November.

  • Beyond the Headlines: Discovering the Real Syria Through My Father’s Eyes

    This is the second in a series introducing my new photo book “Return to Damascus: A Personal Journal.” This post is about my family’s connection to Damascus and my own personal journey.

    “This was all different,” my father murmurs as we walk through Bab Tuma (Saint Thomas’s Gate) which gives its name to the old Christian quarter of Damascus. “And yet, somehow the same.”

    His paradoxical statement captures something essential about Syria that most of us never get to see. At ninety years old, walking slowly through the streets he once knew as a boy, my father was experiencing something profound: the simultaneous recognition and alienation that comes from returning to a homeland that exists partly in memory, partly in reality.

    It was May 2000, and I had traveled to Damascus with him. This was a man who left Syria in 1928, moving to Beirut for his education before eventually emigrating to the United States in 1946. He wanted to share the city with his American-born son, and I wanted to learn more about how Syria intertwined with our family history. What I discovered challenged everything I thought I knew about this ancient crossroads of civilizations.

    ▲ Mounir Sa’adah, revisits the family Damascus family church.

    The Problem with How We See Syria

    The morning light filtered through the ornate wooden shutters of my room at the Sultan Hotel, casting intricate patterns across the tiled floor. I awoke at dawn to the foreign sound of the muezzin’s call to prayer from the nearby Takiyyee Mosque pulling me from sleep. Outside my window, Damascus was already stirring to life in the warm May sunshine, the air carrying the mingled scents of cardamom, exhaust fumes, and jasmine that seemed to define this ancient city.

    This Damascus – vibrant, complex, culturally rich – bears little resemblance to the Syria portrayed through media coverage. Even in 2000, before the devastating civil war that would begin eleven years later, Western portrayals consistently framed Syria and Syrians through a lens of “otherness” and conflict. The tendency to classify entire nations and peoples as exotic, dangerous, or fundamentally different from “us” was already well-established, focusing on political tensions while ignoring the rich cultural heritage, intellectual traditions, and everyday humanity of Syrian people.

    ▲ Street soccer in the Old City of Damascus.

    Since 2011, this pattern has only intensified. Coverage focuses almost exclusively on war, refugees, and extremism – creating a one-dimensional image that flattens the complexity of a civilization that has been a crossroads of culture for millennia. We hear about Syria as a problem to be solved, a tragedy to be pitied, or a threat to be contained. We rarely hear about Syria as a place where people wake up to the smell of jasmine, where ancient traditions of hospitality still flourish, and where people from different traditions have coexisted for centuries.

    My two weeks in Damascus revealed a cultured society that contradicted these stereotypical portrayals. I encountered university professors debating philosophy in coffee houses, artists preserving traditional crafts passed down through generations, and merchants whose families had operated the same shops in the al-Hamidiyah Souk for centuries. This was not the monolithic, threatening “other” of Western imagination, but a complex society grappling with modernity while maintaining deep roots in history.

    Syria at a Crossroads

    The Syria I encountered in 2000 was a nation holding its breath. President Hafez al-Assad, who had ruled with an iron fist since 1971, was visibly ailing. His health, which had begun deteriorating in 1983 due to diabetes and heart problems, had become a matter of quiet speculation among Damascenes. Though no one spoke openly about succession, the question of what came next hung in the air like the scent of cardamom from street vendors’ carts.

    ▲ Ever-visible authoritarianism; the dictator reminding the people of their subjugation.

    The city was plastered with images of Assad – stern Assad in camouflage, smiling Assad in a suit, saluting Assad in formal military dress. His presence was inescapable, appearing on billboards along major roads. But there was a disconnect between the vigorous leader of the posters and the pale, weight-lost figure who appeared on television. Military checkpoints dotted the city, their sandbagged bunkers a reminder of authority, though the soldiers manning them often looked more bored than alert.

    Yet beneath this atmosphere of controlled stability, Damascus pulsed with life. By 7 AM, the streets were already teeming with activity. Small cars screeched through narrow alleys, buses overflowed with passengers, and motorbike-based delivery vehicles navigated the chaos with surprising agility. Street vendors set up their carts, selling everything from fresh bread to household items. The smells of brewing coffee and frying falafel permeated the morning air as cafés and food stalls prepared for the day’s business.

    ▲ Under the watchful eye Muslims stream into the main mosque in the city for Friday prayers. Assad was opposed most strongly by the Muslim Brotherhood, followed by Kurdish, Leftist and Communist groups, and secular opposition. He was ruthless to all.

    The Old City, with its division into distinct quarters revealed a historical coexistence that had characterized Damascus for centuries. The Christian Quarter, formed by a complex pattern of alleys and small streets, housing families whose roots stretched back generations. Though some areas were experiencing gentrification, with homes being converted to museums and restaurants, the sense of continuity remained palpable.

    This was Syria on the cusp of change – a mixture of ancient traditions and modern aspirations, of political uncertainty and cultural vitality. The atmosphere was one of anticipation, a sense of waiting for something to shift, while daily life continued with its eternal rhythms.

    From America to Syria: A Photographer’s Journey Home

    My path to Damascus began decades earlier, rooted in my interest in using photography for social documentation. Growing up in Vermont after my family immigrated to the United States, I became fascinated with the camera as a tool for understanding human experience. My earlier work had focused on American social change – documented in my book “How Many Roads?” which featured images of America in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the turbulent Vietnam War era.

    As a photographer trained in portraiture and street photography, I approached Syria with the same documentary instincts that had driven my work in America. But this journey was different – deeply personal in ways that challenged my usual professional objectivity. Walking through Damascus with my ninety-year-old father, I was simultaneously documenting a foreign country and exploring my own heritage.

    ▲ Christian children playing on the street.

    My father’s perspective provided a unique lens for understanding both continuity and change in Syrian society. He had left in 1928 as a young man, spent decades teaching Arabic and Islamic studies in private high schools in Vermont and Connecticut, and was now returning to find a Damascus transformed yet somehow familiar. His memories of al-Salihiyah as “all orchards” overlaid the present reality of urban development, revealing the layers of change that had accumulated over seven decades.

    Watching him move through the city – standing silently in Byzantine churches, recognizing the shape of mountains against the sky while acknowledging how everything else had changed – I realized I was witnessing something profound about heritage and belonging. This wasn’t about nostalgia or simple homecoming, but about the complex relationship between memory and place, between individual identity and cultural continuity.

    Through my camera lens, I began to see Syria not as an exotic destination but as a homeland I had never known – a place where my family’s stories originated, where the Arabic language my father had taught was the natural medium of daily conversation, where the cultural traditions that had survived in diaspora continued to flourish in their original context.

    The Mission Behind the Camera

    What emerged from this experience was both a personal journey and a larger mission of cultural preservation. The 88 photographs in my book represent more than tourist snapshots or even professional documentation – they constitute an act of cultural counter-narrative, showing Syria’s humanity, complexity, and beauty before the widespread destruction that would follow.

    ▲ Hagop Meguerdichian, an Armenian optician outside his offices. Meguerdichain was the same generation as my mother, and like her was part of the large Armenian community that had been expelled during the Armenian genocide of the 1920’s.

    This isn’t political advocacy. I’m not arguing for any particular government or policy position. Rather, it’s cultural documentation – an attempt to preserve and share the everyday dignity of Syrian life, the richness of its traditions, the warmth of its people, and the depth of its history. In an era when entire societies are reduced to headlines and sound bites, photography can serve as a bridge to deeper understanding.

    My photographs capture Damascus awakening early – streets teeming with life by 7 AM, vendors setting up carts, the gentle hum of conversation rising above street noise as families emerge in the evening to shop and socialize. They document the architectural marvels of the Old City, where narrow streets wind like ancient rivers and balconies almost touch overhead. They preserve moments of daily grace – children playing in shadowed alleys, conservative Muslims waiting for taxis alongside bareheaded Christians, with no notice being given by either.

    These images matter because they show Syria as more than a problem to be solved or a tragedy to be pitied. They reveal a society with the same universal human experiences that connect us all – people working, celebrating, worshiping, raising families, maintaining traditions while adapting to change. They document the complex religious diversity that has characterized Damascus for centuries, the intellectual curiosity that fills coffee houses with debate, the artistic traditions that continue despite political uncertainty.

    Understanding Our Shared Humanity

    As the muezzin’s call to prayer rose from minarets across Damascus on our last evening, creating a haunting melody that seemed to suspend time, I understood something fundamental about the relationship between documentation and understanding. Photography, at its best, doesn’t just capture images – it creates bridges between different worlds, different experiences, different peoples.

    The Syria I documented in 2000 no longer exists in the same form. The civil war that began in 2011 has transformed the country, displaced millions, and damaged or destroyed countless cultural sites. Many of the people I photographed have likely fled, and some of the places I captured may be ruins. This reality makes the photographs even more precious as historical documents, preserving a moment of relative peace and normalcy before the storm.

    ▲ In the main bus yard Christians freely mix with conservative Muslims.

    But the deeper value of this work lies in its challenge to simplistic narratives about who Syrians are and what Syria represents. By showing the country’s complexity – its religious diversity, its cultural sophistication, its deep historical roots, its essential humanity – these images resist the reduction of an entire civilization to political conflicts or security concerns.

    In our interconnected world, such understanding matters more than ever. When we see others as fully human – with the same hopes, fears, joys, and struggles that characterize our own lives – we create the possibility for genuine dialogue and mutual respect. When we reduce them to stereotypes or threats, we lose the chance for the kind of understanding that makes peace and cooperation possible.

    My father’s words that final evening – about feeling both stranger and connected to Damascus – capture something universal about the human experience of belonging and identity. We all carry multiple histories, multiple connections, multiple ways of understanding home. The photographs in this book are my attempt to honor that complexity, to preserve a moment when I glimpsed my own family’s homeland through both familiar and foreign eyes, and to share that experience with others who may never have the chance to see Syria beyond the headlines.

    In the end, this is what photography can offer: not just documentation, but invitation – an invitation to see beyond our assumptions, to recognize our shared humanity, and to understand that every place, every people, every culture contains depths that deserve our attention and respect.

  • The Irresistible Pull of Gritty Cities

    ▲ Catania Fish Market The star of this market is the swordfish, but even the sardines are unusual. It’s true that plastic crates and digital scales abound, but still there’s a feeling of the market being enmeshed in long-running traditions, which gets reflected in the city’s approach to urban planning as well.

    The Irresistible Pull of Gritty Cities: Understanding Why We Love What We’re Missing
    Part II

    One of the most striking features of these older cities is their incredible diversity of housing types and price points, often within the same neighbourhood. In Damascus, you might find a restored 17th-century merchant’s house next to modest apartments that house working families, with both sharing the same narrow street and the same access to local amenities. Palermo’s neighbourhoods mix recently built condos (often retaining traditional facades) with affordable housing apartments, creating the kind of economic integration that many newer developments actively prevent. To give Montreal credit, some neighbourhoods share this diversity, but it’s often frowned on as “gentrification”.

    ▲ No problem with gentrification here This street was founded by Greek colonists in Agrigento, on the southern coast of Sicily, probably around 580 BCE. I would surmise that the Greeks used slaves to haul the blocks used in the construction.

    This mixing isn’t just socially beneficial – to me it’s economically essential for urban vitality. It’s what helps create a local economy with non-chain, locally owned businesses. Diverse housing types create diverse local economies, supporting the small-scale entrepreneurship that makes a neighbourhood interesting and economically resilient.

    The housing diversity in these cities also reflects their adaptability over time. Buildings that were constructed as grand single-family homes can be subdivided into apartments when economic conditions deteriorate, or combined back into larger units when gentrification pressures increase. We’re often critical of this, but it ‘s a flexibility built into the architectural DNA of older cities that allows them to respond to changing demographics and economic conditions without wholesale demolition and reconstruction.

    ▲ Even in ancient neighbourhoods like this one in the Sicilian hill town of Piazza Armerina you can differentiate the renovated houses by window style and roofing.

    The Art of Adaptation and Resilience

    Perhaps the most remarkable quality of these beloved gritty cities is their capacity to adapt and evolve while maintaining their essential character. They’ve survived empires, wars, economic collapses, and social upheavals not by standing still, but by continuously adapting their built environment to new needs while preserving the underlying urban logic that makes them work.

    Damascus offers perhaps the most dramatic example of this adaptability. The old city has continuously evolved over millennia, with Roman columns supporting Islamic arches, Byzantine churches converted to mosques, Ottoman palaces repurposed as museums, and traditional courtyard houses transformed into restaurants and cultural centres. Each layer of history adds to rather than erases the previous ones, creating the rich texture that makes the city so compelling.

    ▲ Damascus is probably the best example of a living city, with Roman, Ottoman, and “contemporary” structures all sharing space in this photo.

    The Integration That Creates Magic

    What makes these cities truly special isn’t any single characteristic but how all these elements work together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. The human scale enables walkability, which supports diverse public spaces, which creates markets for diverse housing types, which generates the economic activity that supports adaptation and renewal. It’s a virtuous cycle that has been refined over centuries of urban living.

    What We’re Missing at Home

    Standing in my ordered, well-regulated neighbourhood in Montreal, I often think about what we’ve traded away in our pursuit of efficient, predictable urban environments. Our streets are wider and cleaner, our building codes more rigorous, our public spaces more carefully maintained. These aren’t bad things – they reflect genuine improvements in public health, safety, and accessibility.

    ▲ The Montreal Plateau is relatively flat as its name implies, with spikes of church spires and an occasional out-of-place apartment tower. The visually boring cookie-cutter buildings in the foreground enforce a visual style, but their predictability saps vitality.

    But in our effort to eliminate the inefficiencies and unpredictabilities of older urban forms, we may have eliminated some of their essential vitality as well. Our zoning codes separate uses that these older cities mix naturally. Our building standards favor large-scale development over the small-scale, incremental growth that creates diverse, affordable neighbourhoods. Our traffic engineering prioritizes movement over lingering, getting through rather than being in.

    ▲ Exceding all predictions The Décarie autoroute as it was designed in the early 1960’s was supposed to max out at 90,000 cars per day. It now handles an average of almost double that.

    The question isn’t whether we should abandon our standards and return to some romanticized past, but whether we can learn from what these older cities do well while maintaining the genuine improvements of contemporary urban planning. Montreal offers some lessons in this direction. The city’s pedestrianization of portions of Ste-Catherine Street shows how even established cities can evolve toward more human-centred design.

    Living in the Tension

    Perhaps what I’m really drawn to in these places isn’t their grittiness per se, but their willingness to live in productive tension between competing values. They’re not trying to optimize for a single goal but rather to balance multiple, sometimes contradictory objectives: old and new, local and global, efficient and experiential, ordered and spontaneous.

    The cities I love aren’t perfect, and I certainly wouldn’t want to eliminate building codes or return to pre-modern public health standards. But they offer something that our more regulated urban environments often lack: they feel like places where humans have lived, adapted, and created something together over time. They feel like home not because they’re comfortable or convenient, but because they’re complex and alive.

    The narrow streets of Damascus, the piazzas of Palermo, the pedestrian rhythms of Thessaloniki – these aren’t just tourist attractions or nostalgic throwbacks. They’re working examples of urban principles that we ignore at our peril. As cities around the world grapple with climate change, housing affordability, and social isolation, these older urban forms offer tested strategies for creating places that are not just efficient but truly livable. The question is whether we’re wise enough to learn from them.

    ▲ A couple in a Piaggio Ape, a vehicle nimble enough to navigate easily through town, and displaying the icons of their traditions. Piazza Armerina, Sicily.

    The Damascus photograph in this post is taken from a book I’m just finishing (Return to Damascus: A Personal Journey) on the experience I had in returning to where my father had been born.

  • The Irresistible Pull of Gritty Cities | Part 1 of 2

    ▲ Catania Open Market I envy the Sicilians and their abundant produce, even at the end of November. Their markets are noisy and colorful. The produce feels close to the farm, which it is.

    The Irresistible Pull of Gritty Cities: Understanding Why We Love What We’re Missing

    I’ve always found myself drawn to certain cities with an almost magnetic pull – places that feel lived-in, weathered, and wonderfully imperfect. From the narrow stone alleys of Damascus to the chaotic vitality of Mexico City, from Palermo’s winding streets to the crumbling decadence of Thessaloniki, these are cities that seem to embrace their contradictions. They’re places where modernity coexists awkwardly but beautifully with centuries of accumulated history, where every street corner tells multiple stories, and where the urban fabric feels genuinely human in scale.

    ▲ Thessaloniki Old City We drove our car through these streets and it was definitely a social experience, since traffic was both directions and each encounter was a negotiation. The stairs on the right definitely would not satisfy Montreal’s setback regulations.

    As someone who calls Montreal home – a city that sits comfortably between order and character – I often wonder what it is about these grittier places that captivates me so deeply. Is it simply the allure of the tourist’s gaze, romanticizing what locals might find frustrating? Or is there something more fundamental about how these cities are designed and how they’ve evolved that creates genuinely superior urban experiences?

    I believe it’s the latter. These cities embody qualities that many of our more regulated, sanitized urban environments have systematically designed out – and in doing so, we’ve lost something essential about what makes a city truly livable.

    ▲ Jean-Talon Market Montreal Our winter markets are abundant but everything is quite orderly, and (sadly!) imported from afar, especially when compared to Catania.

    The Human Scale That We’ve Forgotten

    Walk through the old quarters of Damascus or wander the residential streets of Palermo, and you’re immediately struck by how perfectly sized everything feels for human beings. Buildings rise to four or five stories – tall enough to create urban passageways but low enough that you can still make eye contact with someone leaning out a third-floor window. Streets are narrow enough that neighbours can converse across them but wide enough for the essential choreography of urban life: children playing, vendors selling, neighbours meeting, deliveries being made, life happening.

    ▲ Damascus Street Football Other than there not being any women in this photograph, a lot is happening on the street. This was in the Old City.

    This isn’t accidental. It’s the result of centuries of organic development where buildings were constructed at the pace and scale that individual families and small communities could manage. In Thessaloniki, the traditional urban fabric prioritizes pedestrian comfort over vehicular efficiency. The narrow streets that might frustrate a traffic planner become perfect corridors for social interaction, where the pace naturally slows and encounters become inevitable.

    ▲ Palermo’s streets pick up on the city’s ancient layout, with automobiles present but taking a backseat.

    Contrast this with our modern approach to urban development, where efficiency and standardization trump human experience. Even in Montreal, our newer developments tend towards what we define as modern experience – wider streets, taller buildings, larger blocks that prioritize movement over lingering. We’ve optimized for cars and commerce rather than for the casual encounters and spontaneous connections that actually make urban life rich.

    ▲ Looking north in Montreal from Côte-des-neiges at residential and commercial buildings in one of the fastest expanding parts of the city.

    The smaller scale of these older cities creates what seems to me the conditions necessary for urban vitality. Even though they may look to be museum pieces, they aren’t. They are living examples of urban design that puts human experience first.

    Public Spaces as the City’s Living Rooms

    Perhaps nothing distinguishes these gritty, beloved cities more than the quality and accessibility of their public spaces. Not just parks or grand plazas, but the everyday spaces where public life unfolds: the stepped streets of Damascus that become impromptu gathering places, the piazzas of Palermo that serve as outdoor living rooms for entire neighbourhoods, the casual sidewalk life of Mexico City where sidewalks and public spaces encourage people to meet and relax”.

    These cities understand something fundamental: public space isn’t just about recreation, it’s about democracy. It’s where different social classes, ages, and backgrounds encounter each other naturally. When public space works well, it becomes the foundation for social cohesion and civic engagement.

    ▲ Preparation for Women’s Day March International Women’s Day has been commemorated in Mexico City since the 1930s, but the massive street mobilizations began gaining momentum in more recent decades as a response to Mexico’s epidemic of gender-based violence.

    Mexico City is often dismissed as sprawling and car-dependent, but alongside that reality I see a lot more going on. The city’s downtown areas have spacious parks and sidewalks, accommodating an unending ballet of commuters, tourists, and street vendors. On Sundays, major arteries like Paseo de la Reforma are closed to cars and opened to pedestrians and cyclists, temporarily transforming the large parts of the city into one enormous public space.

    ▲ Mexico City’s less romantic side The city government has tried different approaches at reducing car traffic, all with little success. Nevertheless, there is an inexpensive and well-used public transport system used by 14 million people a day. The open lane is a reverse direction lane for buses.

    What these cities understand is that public space isn’t a luxury – it’s infrastructure. Just as essential as water pipes or electrical grids, public space is the network that allows urban society to function, providing the venues for the informal encounters and casual sociability that bind communities together.

    Walkability as a Way of Life

    In these cities, walking isn’t exercise or a lifestyle choice – it’s simply how you get around. This creates a fundamentally different relationship between residents and their urban environment. When you walk regularly, you notice things: the quality of surfaces, the presence or absence of shade, the rhythm of street life, the small businesses tucked into ground floors.

    ▲ Damascus Old City Bakery Man carries away hot bread purchased from a small bakery.

    Thessaloniki, despite its challenges with broken pavements and sidewalks, illegally parked cars and motorcycles, kiosks and coffee tables, has a vibrant street culture. I look forward to going back soon to see how the city has adapted to its newly-opened metro system, which hopefully will reduce the perpetual gridlock many of its streets experience during the day. Hopefully the ongoing integration of walking and public transit has created an even more layered urban experience.

    Mexico City exemplifies this integration beautifully. Despite its size and complexity, the city maintains an impressive pedestrian culture. Under the leadership of mayor Claudia Sheinbaum (who has a background in environmental engineering) the city dramatically expanded its network of public transit, bolstering its generous public spaces with wide sidewalks and creative public squares.

    ▲ Mexico City’s Metrobus System provides rapid transit with a two dedicated lane system. Multi-unit buses (some all electric) load in stations much like a metro line. Claudi Sheinbaum was instrumental in launching the system as Secretary of the Environment (2000-2006) under then-mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who went on to be President, as she has too.

    Next week: Housing.
    The Damascus photographs in this post are taken from a book I’m just finishing on an experience I had with my father, returning to where he was born.

  • The impossible miracle of Biblioteca Vasconcelos

    Anyone who has moved boxes of books around knows how heavy they are. To have 600,000 volumes suspended in space is close to a miracle! Biblioteca Vasconcelos in Mexico City achieves this remarkable feat, extending the creative practice of Mexico City architecture by floating its stacks in the air. This unique architectural marvel not only serves as a library but also as a cultural hub, attracting visitors who are eager to experience its stunning design.

    Biblioteca Vasconcelos Mexico City Architecture at its best!
    Architect Alberto Kalach made a significant contribution to Mexico City architecture with his daring design – suspending the stacks from the ceiling of the building.

    The architectural design of Biblioteca Vasconcelos is an example of modern creative ingenuity. The building’s side windows allow natural light to flood the interior, creating a serene reading environment that inspires contemplation and study. The stacks, suspended from the ceiling, give the impression of books floating in mid-air, challenging conventional library design and offering a visually striking experience. This innovative concept encourages visitors to engage with the space in a more dynamic way, as they navigate through the airy layout.

    I’ve always photographed in libraries. I enjoy books and the spaces designed for their use. This time there was a problem though. A woman in a semi-official uniform approached me, informing me in Spanish that photography was not allowed. To be honest, it seemed quite permitted, given the number of people snapping pictures on their phones. Unfortunately, a “Real Camera” is viewed differently. There was a loophole: I could apply for a permit at a specific office, allowing me to capture the stunning Mexico City architecture within. I was determined to document this unique space, since to me its beauty and functionality was worth sharing with a wider audience.

    As I filled out the form for the photography permit, I couldn’t help but admire the intricate details of the library’s design. The open spaces were filled with the soft sounds of pages turning and quiet whispers. The atmosphere felt filled warmed by the shared love of literature, making it an inspiring environment for both photographers and bibliophiles alike!

    The office I had been directed to was in the back of the library. I faced another woman, this one sitting at a crowded L-shaped desk near one of the doors that opened out onto the gardens. I asked if I could take pictures and was given a form to fill out. That, coupled with a Quebec driver’s license, and soon I received a plastic tag on a lanyard which gave me Official Status. Hooray, okay to use a camera!

    Visitors reacting to the reworked white whale skeleton by Mexican-born artist Gabriel Orozco at Biblioteca Vasconcelos.
    Visitors reacting to the reworked white whale skeleton by Mexican-born artist Gabriel Orozco, which adds a unique artistic element to the library’s ambiance.

    Mexico City’s Biblioteca Vasconcelos is such an unusual space – one can see the surprise and glee on the faces of people entering for the first time. Any resident can use the library, and many people do. The manner in which the stacks are suspended in mid-air creates a faceted and irregular space, playing with light and transparency. It’s a brilliantly imaginative way to design a library, and brave too in a city prone to powerful earthquakes. The library not only serves its primary purpose but also acts as a community gathering space, hosting events, workshops, and exhibitions that engage the public and foster a love for reading and learning. I don’t know if perhaps a part of what I was sensing was the public pride in the hard-fought win to break away from the book-banning controls of the Catholic Church – but it seems possible that this space embodies some of that pride too.

    The library opened in May of 2006, designed by the architect Alberto Kalach and built next to the old Buenavista railway station, north of the city center. Housing a collection of 600,000 books (using the Dewey Decimal System!), it also features the hanging skeleton of a large gray whale decorated by the artist Gabriel Orozco called “Matrix Móvil”. I saw a retrospective of Orozco’s work in the Museo Jumex (March, 2025) which I’ll describe in a later post. The whale creation is well traveled, having been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2009.

    Biblioteca Vasconcelos stands as a beacon of modern architecture and culture in Mexico City. Its unique design honors the communities, reading public, artists, and scholars that use it. The library exemplifies how architecture can inspire a love for literature and create a sense of belonging among its visitors. Whether you are an avid reader, a photography enthusiast, or simply curious about innovative design, a visit to Biblioteca Vasconcelos is sure to leave a lasting impression. If you are in Mexico City it’s a must. It’s a short Metrobus ride north of the city center, and there’s a metro stop (Buenavista) nearby. The combination of literature, art, and innovative design makes Biblioteca Vasconcelos an essential stop for anyone visiting the city.