The Baron Hotel

Location:
Located on Baron Street (Area 5C), close to the post office and the National Museum. Up until the 70's, The Baron Street itself was considered Aleppo’s champs-elysee, but it has been in constant decay ever since.

History:
Back in 1909, when the Orient Express Railway was being pushed through from Constantinople to Baghdad, Aleppo--then an outpost of the Ottoman Turkish Empire--became a railhead. Two farsighted Armenian brothers from the Mazloumian family, realizing that the city would become an important stopover for travelers en route to both Damascus and Baghdad, took the opportunity to establish a European-style hotel on the outskirts of town in ‘gardens considered unsafe to venture to after dark’. The hotel, called The Baron, was the first luxury class hotel in the Middle East, boasting central heating (Aleppo can be really cold in winter), sweeping stairways, elaborate chandeliers and "modern plumbing" in European bathrooms.

As a consequence, The Baron became the place to stay, and its guest book (now carefully kept in a locked safe, but available for perusal on request) lists the names of its famous visitors (see list below).
The Baron's best-known guest remains T.E. Lawrence "of Arabia", who noted in his monumental Seven Pillars of Wisdom that the distinguished hotel was becoming "almost a second home". In fact the hotel has good reason to remember Lawrence, who, on one occasion, left in such a hurry that he neglected to pay his bill. The bill in question remains on display in a glass cabinet in the Baron's drawing room--no doubt the management, now in the hands of the founders' grandsons; reckon that Lawrence's outstanding account has been paid many times over in terms of publicity value!

Today The Baron is but a pale shadow of its former self, the curtains and carpets faded, the once state-of-the-art plumbing now overly grandiose, clanking and antiquated, yet the establishment retains more color and atmosphere than anywhere else in town.

Guests List:
- T.E. Lawrence "of Arabia": stayed here regularly 1911-1914 when working as an archaeologist in nearby Carchemish.
- US President Theodore Roosevelt
- Aviator Charles Lindbergh
- Kemal Attaturk (founder of Turkey)
- Lady Louis Mountbatten
- Author Agatha Christie and her archaeologist husband Sir Max Mallowan: she wrote the first part of Murder on the Orient Express here.
- Julie Christie
- The boxer Gene Tunney
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
- The Ceaucescus
- King Gustav & Queen Louise of Sweden
- King Faysal I of Iraq
- Queen Ingrid of Denmark
- General Montgomery
- Yuri Gagarin
- Charles de Gaulle (he had a hair cut at the barber shop in front of the Hotel)

- John Rockfeller
- Zayed Bin Sultan al Nahyan
- Marechal Tito
- Gamal Abdel Nasser
- Charles Aznavour