Baron
Baron Hotel (also Baron's Hotel or Hotel Baron), is the oldest hotel inSyria and the region. It is located in downtown Aleppo, Aziziyeh area, Baron street, next to the National Museum.The 1909-opened Baron Hotel is the most famous hotel in Aleppo and is one of the most famous hotels anywhere in the Middle East.
Lawrence of Arabia slept in room 202; King Faisal declared Syria's independence from the balcony in room 215; Agatha Christie wrote her "Murder on the Orient Express" in room 203 (apparently the Istanbul Hotel Pera Palace claims the same story). The Presidential Suite was occupied in turn by King Gustav Adolf VI of Sweden, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Syria's former President Hafez Al Assad, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (the founder of the United Arab Emirates), and American billionaire David Rockefeller.
2018: The Baron, in west Aleppo near the front line, was hit by mortar bombs, including one that sprayed shrapnel across an upper floor and another that crashed through the window of its “Oriental Room” onto delicate floor tiles but failed to explode. It had long stopped taking paying guests (in 2012 - bar a few old friends - when Syria’s civil war came to Aleppo and mortars and sniper fire began to plague the streets around). Tashjian, a 66-year-old former teacher, chases away street kittens that creep through broken french windows into the dining room and tries to keep the mostly deserted hotel from falling further into disrepair in a city with little electricity or water. Her husband, Armen Mazloumian, the grandson of the hotel’s founder, died in 2016, two years after they married following a 30-year friendship. The Baron now belongs to his sisters, who left Syria years earlier, she said.
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 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. Thus 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.
A few years later the Mazloumian Brothers enlarged their business by setting up the new Baron's Hotel. In 1909, amongst the gardens on the outskirts of old Aleppo, they built the first floor of the current building; the second floor followed in 1911, and the third in 1940.
Until WW II, most of the guests were British or German. British agents posing as archaeologists spied on German generals, who arranged opulent banquets for their allies while German engineers built the rail line from Berlin to Baghdad.
The famous Armenian novelist Krikor Zohrab was among the first guests of the hotel.
The second floor of the hotel has witnessed the presence of political leaders and a lot of figures of culture: Lawrence of Arabia slept in room 202; King Faisal declared Syria's independence from the balcony in room 215; Agatha Christie wrote her "Murder on the Orient Express" in room 203 (apparently the Istanbul Hotel Pera Palace claims the same story). The Presidential Suite was occupied in turn by King Gustav Adolf VI of Sweden, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Syria's former President Hafez Al Assad, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (the founder of the United Arab Emirates), and the American billionaire David Rockefeller.
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Your Keeper of the Archives
Armen Mazloumian
40/1 Rooms