Syrian archives images of Damascus homes to preserve them

Syrian archives images of Damascus homes to preserve them

DAMASCUS  “” Strolling through the alleyways of war-torn Syria's capital, Rania Kataf snaps photos of the city's famed houses, capturing their nooks and crannies for posterity.

After seeing how vulnerable they had become during the country's devastating civil war, the 35-year-old began creating a digital archive of the buildings of Old Damascus.

"I was inspired by European photographers who tried to document buildings in their cities during the Second World War so architects could later rebuild part of them," she said.

The old city of the Syrian capital is famed for its elegant century-old houses, usually two storeys built around a leafy rectangular courtyard with a carved stone fountain at its centre.

Their many rooms usually include both a summer and a winter guestroom, both looking onto the courtyard.

While the capital has been largely spared the violence of Syria's almost 10-year war, several of these traditional homes have been abandoned by their owners or damaged in the conflict.

Some have even become home to families displaced by the fighting, who have settled in their high-ceilinged rooms and sometimes made slight alterations to their interiors.

In 2016, Kataf created a group on Facebook called "Humans of Damascus", to which more than 22,000 Syrians from the capital have