Here are some of what an American, an English, and a French authors had to say about the beautiful Damascus of the 19th century.

Mark Twain talked about his visit to Damascus in his book The Innocent Abroad, published in 1869 :

"... no recorded event has occurred in the world but Damascus was in existence to receive the news of it. Go back as far as you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus. To Damascus years are only moments, decades are only flitting trifles of time. She measures time not by days, months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise and prosper and crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality. She saw Greece rise and flourish two thousand years, and die. In her old age she saw Rome built, she saw it oversahdow the world with its power; she saw it perish..... She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies."

The English historian and traveller, Alexaner Kinglake said:

"The juice of her life is the gushing and ice-cold torrent that tumbles from the snowy sides of Anti-Lebanon. Close along on the river's edge through seven sweet miles of rustling boughs and deepest shade, the city spreads out her whole length; as a man falls flat, face forward on the brook that he may drink and drink again: so Damascus,thirsting for ever, lies down with her lips to the stream and clings to its rushing waters."

The French poet and traveller, Alphonse de Lamartine, wrote in April of 1833 about his arrival to Damascus:

"through a gap in the rocks, my eye fell on the strangest and most fantastic sight which man has ever seen: it was Damascus and its boundless desert, a few hundred feet below my path... first the town, surrounded by its walls,,, a forest of minarets of all shapes, watered by the seven branches of its river, and streams without number, until the view is lost in a labyrinth of flower gardens and trees....."

Unfortunatily, many people who read these positive appraisals would feel disappointed when they visit Damascus of the 21st century. The city that has survived many invasions and wars for centuries is withering little by little. The river is drying up. The flowers are being pulled out. The gardens have been destroyed. The people are abandoning her. The overwhelming strive of restoring and maintenaing the dying beauty is put in the hands of a few locals and foreigners who have been mesmerized by her beauty.