Found­ed in the 3rd mil­len­ni­um B.C., Dam­as­cus is one of the old­est cities in the Mid­dle East. In the Mid­dle Ages, it was the cen­tre of a flour­ish­ing craft indus­try, spe­cial­iz­ing in swords and lace. The city has some 125 mon­u­ments from dif­fer­ent peri­ods of its his­to­ry — one of the most spec­tac­u­lar is the 8th-cen­­tu­ry Great Mosque of the Umayyads, built on the site of an Assyr­i­an sanc­tu­ary.