Baron Hotel

Baron Hotel
the hotel's facade
Location within Aleppo
General information
Location	Aleppo, Syria
Coordinates	36°12′18″N 37°9′00″E / 36.20500°N 37.15000°E / 36.20500; 37.15000Coordinates: 36°12′18″N 37°9′00″E / 36.20500°N 37.15000°E / 36.20500; 37.15000
Opening	1909–1911
Owner	Mazloumian Brothers
Management	Armen Mazloumian (Director)
Technical details
Floor count	3
Other information
Number of rooms	17
Number of restaurants	1

Baron Hotel (also Baron's Hotel, Hôtel Baron or Le Baron), is the oldest hotel in Syria and the region. It is located in downtown Aleppo, on Baron street of the Aziziyeh area, next to the National Museum of Aleppo.

In November 2014 the hotel was forced to close its doors as the Syrian civil war gripped the city, with the front line separating government and rebel forces just metres away from the building. For over two years there had been almost no paying guests.

The fate of the historical artefacts inside the building and the giant Stephens thermometer, with French script, affixed to the front wall since 1917, is unknown.

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 pilgrimage. While passing through Aleppo which was -even at that time- a cosmopolitan centre of commerce, she noticed how uncomfortable Europeans felt when staying at 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 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.

Currently (March 2016) the hotel is still operating despite the gravity of the situation caused by the war.

Until the Second World War, during the French Mandate most of the guests were British, French or German. British agents posing as archaeologists spied on German generals, who arranged opulent banquets for their Ottoman allies while German engineers built the rail line from Berlin to Baghdad.