1. Home
2. Multimedia
3. Daraya Rises Again

Daraya, just seven kilometers from Damascus, was once the city of roses and workshops, a symbol of creativity and spirit. In 2011, its residents greeted soldiers from the Assad regime with flowers during peaceful demonstrations. The response was a massacre, followed by a four-year siege that emptied the city of its 250,000 inhabitants.

Destroyed hospitals, obliterated neighborhoods, and a wounded collective memory: Daraya became the only city in Syria to lose its entire population during the war.

Yet today, despite the ruins and the scars, families are returning. Doctors, teachers, artisans, and workers are rebuilding it stone by stone, bringing back with them the knowledge and experience they learned in exile.