Travel Guide Homs

The impression is that it faces a huge cloud plant. High chimneys pour thick white smoke into the azure sky, Homs is home to one of the country's two oil refineries. On the edge of the road, the pines are tilted to close to 90 per cent under the action of wind gusts sweeping that region." The city is located in a spacious and plain countryside where beautiful streams come in. The tower of the walls is almost all, but it is ruined and there is nothing beautiful to see that the bazaar, that is, the market and basestan that is faict in the way of Turkey. The walls are monstrent although the city once esté something, so it is sitting in good country. '»»»»This excerpt from the story of a French traveller, Pierre Belson du Mans, presented in his th century language, keeps all his topicality. «Its spacious and countryside» is now irrigated by a large restraint to the south of the city (Qattiné Lake), fed by the Orontes, which runs through the border with Lebanon a few kilometres downstream from the lake. In the west, the depression separating the Jebel Ansarié from the Lebanese Mountains makes it easy to reach the coast. As a kind of river knot, remote from the mountains, the "Homs Gap" was at all times the communication route used by caravans, travellers and troops. A commercial crossroads, it is in Homs, the country's third largest city by its size and population, that the Bedouins are still exchanging their goods. Located on the edge of the desert, Homs serves as an agricultural market.Local industry is traditionally linked to textiles: " There is great trafic traffic in Hamouz [Homs]: also feed the verms molt diligently… Ilz cultivates fig and meuriers in the arrousez fields and also several fruictiers trees. Their common work is to make mouchouers and couvre couvre, mesez in part of white, red and yellow soye, entremeslée of gold wire, which one sçait by any Turkey, Handkerchiefs handkerchiefs», continues Belson du Mans. Moreover, the Al-Harir souk still bears the name of the silk that in its shops.But in the glorious past of this metropolis, which saw the emergence of the Severe Dynasty, little remains. And even the walls, mentioned by Belson, were bulldozed by the Ottomans, as were bridges. Without an apparent historical heritage, and without a real charm, the city finds itself abandoned by tourists, who prefer it Hama or Tartous or even Damascus (within 200 km) as a starting point for excursions to the Krak of the Knights or to Mar Moussa. However, due to frequent road connections and central location, Homs could be a stop for the traveller to stay there. The evenings are soft around the clock square, its shops and its cafés.