The Kadam railway station in Damascus, once the main link between Europe and the Middle East since the time of the Ottoman Empire, is now in ruins, but there is hope that it, like the country, will be revived after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
Neighboring Turkey has expressed interest in restoring the railway line to Damascus as part of efforts to boost trade and investment between the two countries.
Kadam was a station on the legendary Hejaz Railway, built under Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II in the early 1900s, connecting Muslims from Europe and Asia through present-day Turkey to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in present-day Saudi Arabia.
However, this glory was short-lived. The railway soon became a target for Arab fighters in the armed uprising during World War I, supported by Britain and the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, who ultimately brought down the Ottoman Empire.
In the following decades, Syria used its section of the railway as the main mode of transporting people between Damascus and its second largest city, Aleppo, as well as with several other cities and even neighboring Jordan.
But it was damaged in the civil war that has raged since 2011, when the army turned it into a military base. The Kadam station was too strategic for soldiers to ignore. And it gave Assad's forces an advantage over key rebel strongholds in Damascus. The station's offices became a sniper's nest.
Fighting has been recorded at the train station at least once, in 2013. Footage circulating online showed rebels shooting and hiding behind trains.
Assad's forces expelled the rebels from Damascus in 2018. The train station, although badly damaged, reopened shortly afterwards.
Slogans glorifying Assad and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a key ally of the ousted leader, can still be seen on the walls.
"We will kneel and kiss wherever Assad walks," says one.
The nearby Al-Asali neighborhood is now largely in ruins after being a no-man's land between the station and the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp that became a rebel stronghold and was besieged and bombed by government forces for years.
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