Syria – a country that should definitely be on your list of places to visit…not now but certainly in the future.

On being offered the chance to visit Syria – a group of other agents and I were the guests of travel firm, Cox and Kings – I must confess to some initial misgivings. The standard of the accommodation was one; our safety and security another. Those misgivings were to last no longer than the moment our plane set down at Damascus airport. What followed was both a revelation and a thoroughly delightful overturning of preconceptions.

Damascus is possibly the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world, and, as such, breathes an astonishing heritage. Islam, Judaism and Christianity are all an integral part of the fabric of the city, ancient, civilisation-shaping beliefs and customs embedded in the very stonework of the thoroughfares of the pre-modern districts. Shaded alleys run deep into the heart of the ancient city, channels that feed into labyrinthine medieval souqs; bazaars are alive with the sounds of trade millennia old; streets, decorated by jewel-like houses, suddenly open up to magnificent courtyards; arches support steepling minarets; chapels that, you imagine, still appear as they once did to pilgrims of the middle ages hug themselves in corners; and the soft fragrances of fruits, spices and herbs drift on the gentle breeze.

Our hotel was a gem of traditional Syrian architecture, its rooms – which came complete with everything the traveller could wish for including air conditioning – gathered around a beautiful central courtyard. By day, we visited the stunning Umayyad Mosque, the Bab Keissan Gate on the old Roman walls, the tiny underground church of St Ananais (he who was responsible for the restoration of St Paul’s sight after his conversion), and Mount Qassioun, from the foot of which Damascus spreads out in all its panoramic splendour.

The food was excellent. Each lunchtime greeted us with a different mezza. One evening, we visited a restaurant over whose modest threshold we would never have set a foot had we not been tipped off as to the pleasures awaiting us on its menu. It was run by two brothers who served us not only a meal of mouth-wateringly sensual flavours and textures but a side dish of endlessly amusing anecdotes. Another culinary delight met us at the Baghdad Café, essentially a roadside hut but one which produced from its kitchen some glorious Bedouin cooking.

While in Damascus, we did most of out site seeing on foot, and I can honestly say, even allowing for the sporadic distribution of street lighting, that I have never felt safer. Or more welcomed. Almost everyone seemed to speak English; and everyone seemed genuinely pleased to see you. Falling into conversation with a young woman I met – she was an engineering graduate – I was assured that Syria was no oppressive Islamist state. Women wear the burka if they so choose, but there is no compunction, and many women hold not only good jobs but positions of influence and authority in the country. Crime appears unheard of.

Leaving Damascus, we journeyed to Palmyra, the finest jewel in Syria’s already rich tourist crown. On our way, we passed through Maalula, a village cupped in a narrow valley that trickles from the foothills of the Anti-Lebanon range, where the locals speak Aramaic, a language that Christ would have understood as his own, and live in houses, painted in dazzling blues and yellows, that press right against the cliff face. As we left, a village woman blessed in Aramaic, and I found it immensely moving.

Palmyra itself is an oasis in the middle of the Syrian desert and it overflows with wonders. Pink hued as it has aged under the Arabian sun, it was once a vital staging point on the old Silk Road, linking the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia and Persia. Long before even silk brought its wealth to Palmyra, the settlement was important enough to be mentioned in an Assyrian tablet dating as far back as the 19th century BC. The Romans took up serious occupation in Palmyra during the second century AD, and it is from this time that most of the breathtaking ruins date. Everywhere is a forest of colonnades, temples, theatres and funerary towers.

Roman Palmyra’s fall from grace came when Zenobia, a descendant of Cleopatra and the widowed wife of Palmyra’s greatest ruler, declared the city’s independence. Rome’s response was a siege and Zenobia’s capture. The ruins, which have been painstakingly excavated and restored, cover a site some 50 hectares in size, and new finds are being unearthed all the time. Gazing up at the great Temple of Bel, I felt awestruck not by the magnificence of the surroundings alone, sublime though they are, but by my hand-touching proximity to a civilisation that was in its pomp and glory two millennia ago.

Refreshed after a night’s rest at a nearby hotel, we next set off for Cracs des Chevaliers, possibly the most impressive medieval citadel still standing anywhere in the world. It was built by the crusading Knights Hospitallers to control the Homs Gap, a corridor in the Syrian coastal mountain range and a key strategic point for the defence of the Syrian inlands. It took over a century to complete, but given its landscapedominating scale – it has the immoveable gravity of a small mountain – I was surprised it was finished as quickly as that. The Hospitallers held their man made peak for 127 years until, in 1271, the fortress fell to the Mameluk Sultan Beybars. With its cloud-touching towers, mighty bulwarks, soaring ramparts, barbicans, casements, bastions, gateways, aqueducts, cisterns, halls, courtyards and cavernous storerooms, Cracs des Chevaliers could house an army of 5,000 men and withstand a five-year long siege.

As if the sight of one overwhelming fortress were not enough, we were presented with another. At Ugarit, one of the few Bronze Age sites in the Middle East, stands Qala’at Salah ad- Din, Saladin’s castle. Cresting the Jebel Daryous mountain range, the castle holds its impregnable position on rocky spur overlooking two fast-flowing steams below. The neck of land that once connected the plateau was cut away by hand to create un unassailable gorge; cut away, that is, save for a needle of stone, 28 metres high, on which the drawbridge perched.

From Ugarit, it was on to Aleppo, Syria’s second city. While Damascus has always been Syria’s holy heart, Aleppo made its name as a commercial centre. Its trading past helped to shape Aleppo. The wide treelined avenues give it a European architectural sensibility, and many of the city’s inhabitants are descended from Armenian Christian refugees who settled here after leaving Turkey. That said, Aleppo is still very much an Arabian bazaar city. The chaotic souqs and caravanserais crowd each other, the cobbled streets echo to the clatter of horsedrawn carts and donkey-riding couriers, while the scent of olive soap, spices, roasting coffee and grilled shwarma perfumes the air.

On our final day, based in Aleppo, we drove out to the basilica of St Simeon Stylites, a 5th century Christian who, deciding that life in a monastery was too much of a soft option, retreated to the top of a 12-metre pillar where, secured to a railing by a chain around his neck, he lived for the next 36 years. On his death in 459, a church was built around the pillar to commemorate Simeon’s remarkable piety (and sense of balance). The basilica is a glorious ruin, but the pillar itself is now a sadly depleted 2-metre version of its former self, having been assiduously chipped at by relicseeking pilgrims over the centuries.

Dotted around Aleppo are the ‘dead cities’, around 700 ruined Byzantine villages, abandoned after the olive trade on which their inhabitants depended went into decline. Some of the ‘cities’ are merely single structures – monasteries, villas, baths – or monuments; others are eerie ghost towns. It was while we were visiting the ‘cities’ that we came across a group of Bedouins. Although Bedouins have a reputation for keeping their distance from visitors, we were keen to talk to them. Our tour leader approached the group and asked if we could take photographs. Smiles all round. Of course we could. The hospitality did not stop at a few snaps either. I was invited into one of the tents – the son could speak English – and met the family as they sat upon their rugs. The welcome was as warm and as generous as all the welcomes I had received during my time in Syria.

Flying home at the end of eight very impressive days, hugely enjoyable days, I felt a shiver of shame at the doubts I had entertained at the start of the trip. Syria as a top holiday destination? I was truly converted.