1,206-CITY ATLASSOURCE-BACKED CITY REFERENCE
Syria
Compare this sourced profile of Damascus, Syria before planning. Stable fields identify the place; confirm current transport, access and opening details with official sources.
01What the data says — and does not say
This page separates the checked GeoNames row for Damascus—1,569,394, Asia/Damascus, and source coordinates—from live travel claims. Those fields identify and compare the record; they do not prove current transport, accessibility, census totals, or a City Atlas Club visit.
Wikidata's localized description: capital and largest city of Syria.
02This city's dataset fingerprint
The source row behind Damascus is GeoNames ID 170654. Its recorded administrative path is Damascus Governorate → Syria, and GeoNames classifies the place as a capital of a political entity. Damascus occurs once as a primary city label in this atlas sample; the numeric ID remains the durable source key if names change. The city row itself was updated 2019-09-05; that date belongs to the source record, not to every transport or visitor detail in the real destination.
Within the fixed 1,206-record atlas, Damascus ranks 295 by recorded population. Inside the 5 selected Syria entries it ranks 2; inside the 243 entries in its broad region it ranks 63. Its 1,569,394 population value is 2.02 times the 775,404 median for the country cohort and 1.74 times the 902,588 regional median. Damascus is rank 2 among the 5 selected Syria entries, so a percentage band would overstate this small cohort. Damascus's recorded value reaches at least twice the country-cohort median in this snapshot. These comparisons describe this selected dataset only; they are not current census rankings or official urban-area boundaries.
Damascus's three nearest other atlas coordinates are Beirut at 84.567 km with 1,916,100 recorded people; Irbid at 113.843 km with 569,068 recorded people; Homs at 140.771 km with 775,404 recorded people. The closest-to-farthest distance spread is 56.204 km. Compared with Beirut, Damascus's recorded population is 0.82 times as large. Against Damascus, Beirut follows Beirut → Lebanon in the source. Its point has higher latitude and lower longitude; it belongs to the selected Lebanon cohort rather than Syria, uses Asia/Beirut instead of Asia/Damascus, and carries the same capital of a political entity class. Its recorded population is above Damascus's. Against Damascus, Irbid follows Irbid → Jordan in the source. Its point has lower latitude and lower longitude; it belongs to the selected Jordan cohort rather than Syria, uses Asia/Amman instead of Asia/Damascus, and carries first-order administrative seat rather than capital of a political entity. Its recorded population is below Damascus's. Against Damascus, Homs follows Homs → Syria in the source. Its point has higher latitude and higher longitude; it belongs to the same selected Syria cohort, uses the shared Asia/Damascus identifier, and carries first-order administrative seat rather than capital of a political entity. Its recorded population is below Damascus's. Its nearest-neighbor distance ranks 633 of 1,206 from shortest to longest in the same snapshot. Damascus's nearest-coordinate gap belongs to the wider half of atlas distances. This pattern can reveal whether other catalog references are geographically close, but it cannot establish whether a border crossing is possible or practical, or whether rail, road, fare, or journey-time connections exist. Read as one record signature, GeoNames 170654, the coordinate pair 33.5102 / 36.2913, country rank 2 of 5, and neighbor GeoNames 276781 at 84.567 km bind Damascus to a reproducible comparison. That combined key distinguishes the row; it is not a recommendation or evidence of a physical connection.
Damascus's reference point is 33.5102° north and 36.2913° east. The IANA identifier Asia/Damascus is shared by 5 city rows in this catalog, while the GeoNames class PPLC is shared by 129 rows. Damascus's row carries a first-order administrative label but no second-order label. Damascus's point falls in the middle-latitude coordinate band used by this atlas's row checks. Damascus's time-zone field defines the narrower catalog cohort; its place class is shared more broadly. GeoNames supplies no elevation for Damascus, so the profile preserves that missing value instead of guessing terrain. Together these fields form a reproducible identity check for this page, not a claim about walkability, climate or accessibility.
03Nearby atlas references
Damascus's closest other entries in this atlas are Beirut (84.567 km), Irbid (113.843 km), Homs (140.771 km).
04Verify before you book
Before visiting Damascus, confirm changing decisions with current first-party sources:
Read how City Atlas Club verifies changing travel facts →05Sources and freshness
GeoNames updated the row 2019-09-05; the atlas checked the dataset 2026-08-04. Available Wikidata fields were verified in the same run.
GeoNames data: CC BY 4.0. Wikidata labels and descriptions: CC0 1.0.