On a recent trip from Germany, where he lives, to his hometown of Aleppo, Alhakam Shah made a decision. He won’t stay in hotels or with friends. Instead, he will stay in what was once his father’s office in Aleppo’s old city.

There’s just one problem.

“None of the rooms had doors or windows that could be closed,” Schaal, who has been away from the city for a decade, told Al Jazeera. Winters in Aleppo are extremely cold, with temperatures well below zero degrees Celsius.

Still, he bought a sleeping bag that was advertised as being able to withstand extreme weather.

“It turns out that’s not the case and I still wake up many nights with cold toes,” he said. But despite the cold, he doesn’t regret the decision.

Although his trip to Syria was short – about two weeks, partly due to flight cancellations Armed conflict in Aleppo – Schaal began renovating his old home in the Old Town, which had been looted and damaged during the war.

The roof collapsed and the street door was removed. Two weeks seemed not enough time to complete the extensive renovation work required.

But he got the job done and installed a metal gate on the house to show it was no longer an abandoned property.

“I’m very happy. I’m really, really happy to be in Aleppo, not as a guest or a tourist, but as an Aleppo,” he said. “As a homebody. I feel at home.”

Thousands of Syrians are returning to Aleppo, a large city devastated by years of neglect and war. However, most of them are plagued by infrastructure damage and require extensive reconstruction work.

Syria’s new government, which has been in power since December 2024, has begun some reconstruction work in Aleppo. But residents wonder if it will be enough to restore the city to its former glory.

years of damage

Aleppo was Syria’s most populous city until the war decimated its population.

Its location made it an important stop on the Silk Road trade routes and for travelers traveling through Anatolia (a large peninsula of Turkey) east into Iraq or further south toward Damascus.

Although the emergence of Egypt’s Suez Canal in international shipping has weakened Aleppo’s regional status, it has retained its importance in Syria as the country’s industrial capital.

President Hafez al-Assad took control of Syria in 1970 and ruled throughout the period. Assad regime’s massacre in Syria Hama Town It also spread to Aleppo in the early 1980s, killing thousands of opponents. Still, the city persevered.

However, by the time the Syrian uprising broke out in 2011, Aleppo was already suffering from state underinvestment and neglect.

Syria plunged into war as Bashar al-Assad took over as president after the death of his father Hafez in 2000 and launched a violent crackdown. Aleppo soon became divided, with regime forces controlling the west and opposition forces controlling the east.

Then, in 2016, the Assad regime, with the help of Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, violently occupied the eastern part of the city, which has become the capital of the Syrian revolution. In this process, they destroyed large areas of land Thousands of people were expelled from eastern Aleppo.

More than eight years later, Assad’s regime falls, and some in Aleppo Children return as liberators. But they discovered that the authorities had not rebuilt the city during their absence. Many of Aleppo’s suburbs, where Syria’s production boomed in the pre-war years, are now ghost towns after the regime cut off water and electricity services.

Aleppo is still struggling. Informal settlements and overcrowded schools are common in the city and other parts of northern Syria, where the EU Report It said in January that “2.3 million people live in camps and informal settlements, 80 (percent) of whom are women and children”.

Locals say they fear Aleppo may never be the same again.

“Things will never go back to the way they were before,” Roger Asfar, a native of Aleppo and the Syria country director of the Adian Foundation, told Al Jazeera. The Adian Foundation is an independent organization focused on citizenship, diversity management and community engagement.

Asfar said the needs in Aleppo are the same as those across Syria, which has been ravaged by more than a decade of war. Redevelopment is a priority but will require significant investment, not least to preserve the city’s historic character.

reconstruction

The Syrian government, working with organizations such as the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), has restored parts of Aleppo’s Old City, including its historic Souk, a 13-kilometer (8-mile) covered market.

The government also installed water pipes and new lighting around the city’s historic citadel, the city’s crown jewel and a tourist attraction for Syrians and foreigners alike. The Aleppo Municipality is also working with the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums to restore parts of the citadel and the Umayyad Mosque in the old city.

Still, efforts to rebuild Aleppo remain daunting and require more investment.

Asfar said the challenge starts with governance. This requires Damascus to not just impose its decisions on the city, but to consult with locals. “Aleppo does not need an authority that decides on its own and ignores all other voices,” he said.

Aleppo governorate, which includes the city and eight districts in northern Syria, is the most densely populated area in Syria, according to UNICEF. Its population of 4.2 million has been forced to endure problems facing much of Syria, including infrastructure problems and chronic power outages.

Schaal is a recent returnee from Aleppo and a founding scholar of the Aleppo Project, a Central European University program that aims to address key issues facing the city’s eventual reconstruction.

He said he expected infrastructure issues to “improve in the coming years,” especially as Syria’s oil and gas revenues increase. But he warned expectations should be tempered.

Shar, an Aleppo native, holds out hope for the city’s revival. He noted that a silver lining that Assad overlooked was that, unlike Homs or Damascus, the city had not been gentrified by the previous government’s economic and political elite.

To return or not to return?

Aleppo has always been a city characterized by its culture and diversity. Some Aleppoans hope that character will return.

Musician Bassel Hariri, a native of Aleppo who now lives in London, learned to play the instrument from his father. He remembers his hometown’s rich and diverse traditions, which have been passed down from generation to generation.

“Music, art, cooking, whatever — everything is brought directly from the community,” Hariri said. “Aleppo’s richness, cultural access and diversity make it one of the most wonderful cities in Syria.”

While the city may never regain its former glory, thousands of Syrians are still returning to their homes in Aleppo and its countryside. Others have nowhere to go at all.

For Shar, Aleppo still beckons. Two things held him back: his wife’s full-time job as a lecturer in Germany, and the lack of a stable salary in Syria.

“That’s it,” he said. “Personally, it doesn’t take much to get me back to Aleppo.”