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Concept
Baron Hotel
Summary
Baron Hotel (also Baron's Hotel; Hôtel Baron or Le Baron), is the oldest hotel that currently operates in Syria. It is located on Baron street in down-town Aleppo's Aziziyeh district. The Baron has sustained some civil war-related minor damage but is still standing.
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 (from eastern Anatolia) was on her way to Jerusalem for . While passing through Aleppo which was—even at that time—a cosmopolitan centre of commerce, she noticed how uncomfortable Europeans felt when staying in the traditional caravanserais. Eventually, she 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, before World War I, the brothers Onnig and Armenak Mazloumian enlarged their business by setting up the new Baron's Hotel. In 1909, amongst the gardens that were then 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. During the French mandate, the street where Le Baron was built, was named after General Henri Gouraud. After the independence of Syria in 1946, the government decided to rename the street after "Baron" for the fame and the importance of the hotel.
The Hotel's fortune reflects the changes that have taken place in the country. Baron's is one of several notable hotels in the Middle East that "seem to tell a story of how a region once viewed by foreigners as a playground has given way to a newer imagery of hard regimes and struggles to get by."
In November 2014 the hotel was forced to close its doors as the Syrian civil war further tightened its grip on the city. The front line separating government and rebel forces lay just metres away from the building. For a time the hotel restarted operations despite the gravity of the war conditions. It had reportedly also been kept open to shelter refugees who had come in from the countryside.
Official source
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