I was close to Bosra 5 months ago, when I visited Umm Al-Jimal. That Jordanian WHS lies just some 25km away and is said to have been within the sphere of influence of Bosra. However, although the two share the distinctive black basalt as the main building material, Bosra was clearly the more prominent city during the Roman and Byzantine eras.

We visited Bosra as a day trip from Damascus, the drive is just 1h45 minutes one way. It’s an easy turn-off from the strategic main road to Amman. In the distance, we could see the Druze city of Suwayda, the only place declared out of bounds during our trip due to fighting as recent as July 2025 (it wasn’t on the itinerary anyway). Everything was fine on the ground in Bosra, but some leftover graffitti here and there attested to the city’s prominent role in the toppling of the regime of Assad.

There is clearly an Old Town and a New Town in Bosra. We parked near the entrance of the citadel (yes, another one in Syria – they do castles well). This one, though, is the shell that encapsulates the great Roman Theater. It has been wonderfully preserved, including the stage, and is among the very best remaining of its kind. The grounds of the citadel also have some good mosaics and sculptures.

I had put some effort into adding Points of Interest to our Bosra site map, and managed to pinpoint almost all historic sights. Only for the Madrasa Jâmi' Mabrak an-Nâqua (explicit part of OUV!), I had no clue and it is also not in the excellent map and info provided by labour of love Bosracity.com. On the ground, the sights were all still there. Most notably, the Omari mosque, known as one of the most ancient mosques in Islam, and probably been rebuilt a dozen times since. Its square minaret and open courtyard (now covered by a plastic roof) are typical of early mosques. Wikipedia listed it as destroyed during the war (probably due to a mix-up with a mosque of the same name elsewhere), but although it had some damage from shelling to its roof, its overall condition seemed fine to me. It is also again in use as a mosque.

While reading up beforehand, I had expected the Old Town to be very much overgrown and overbuilt. The Hippodrome, labelled by BosraCity as “very difficult to see”, is unmissable looking south from the roof of the Citadel. Bosra is more like a town with straight streets and many of its buildings still standing than an archaeological site. Local people, until recently, lived in or next to the old buildings (or used them as spolia), but this practice seems to have died out during the war.

Some parts have suffered from recent digging/looting and several monuments have been severely damaged. The ”King's Daughter's Bed” has been destroyed: this was a well-preserved Kalybe, a Roman public façade solely for the display of a statue, where rituals were enacted in front of (it looked like this, the first picture in Squiffy’s review). They plan to restore it.