�y��vlog

It was midday at a caravanserai—which you probably know is a station beside the roads where caravans rest.

This means researchers simply don't know what is buried in the sites, which are mainly mounds, fortresses, early roadside inns known as caravanserais and canal systems.

From the famed Khan Assad Pasha, a caravanserai in Old Damascus, to the courtyard of the Damascus Citadel, he wants to showcase what his tired country still has to offer.

The plan also involves converting several of the city's wikalas or caravanserais, into boutique hotels, an idea proven successful elsewhere in the Middle East.

We took the roof off the Italianate, turn-of-the-century British pavilion and rebuilt the interior as an Ottoman caravanserai, inserting the traces of an earlier work I had made for the Istanbul Biennial in 2003.