Historical places in Middle East

Bahrain only has 3 UNESCO World Heritage sites and Bahrain Fort, Qal'at al-Bahrain, is deservingly one of them. This finely restored fort lies pretty on the waterfront with a backdrop of Manama skyline. It's real fort with moat and high protective walls. Evidence shows that the site has been occupied since 2300 BC, but the fort you see today is from the 16th century and built by the Portuguese. The grounds of the fort are popular for strolls and running at sunset. The villages right to the south of the fort as been known as "painted village" due to the pastel coloured murals on the houses, but they are now fainted, dusty and seem in disrepair – a stark contrast to the otherwise fine Bahrain Fort.

Amne Suraka (meaning "Red Security") served as the northern headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service during Saddam Hussain's reign. Here thousands of Kurds were imprisoned, tortured and eventually killed by Saddam's special forces. In 1991 Kurdish fighters won control over the area and today the prison serves as a museum and memorial. The buildings are still riddled with bullet holes and the courtyard is lined with tanks and other war relics. Inside you can see prison cells where enemies of Saddam's regime were kept. Some of the rooms have a macabre mannequin setup showing how the torture was carried out. There are even mannequins of some of the most famous Kurdish rebels that were tortured here - most of them were later transported to Baghdad and hanged.

The old town of Jerusalem deserves more than this single article. There is so much history and religious important places packed into one spot that it's hard to do more than scratching the surface. By being the holiest place on earth for Christians, Jews and the third holiest for Muslims (after Mecca and Medina) it's a place of controversy, something we won't dwell with. Go there as a traveller and just suck up the atmosphere. It's pure madness; hordes of tourist getting charmed by vendors, strangely outfitted religious characters rushing trough the narrow lanes and teenage soldiers with pimples and guns. With all the most-see sites like Western Wall, Temple Mount with the Dome of Rock and the church of the Holy Sepulchre taken the attention, there are a lot of wonderful strange sites that are half hidden. Try to find where the last supper took place, the birth place of Virgin Mary or the Ethiopian Monastery Deir-Sultan. No matter what your belief or expectations are, Jerusalem will blow you away.

A very well preserved ruin of an ancient Roman city with city walls, theatre, hammams (baths) and colonnaded streets. It was the rich surrounding farmland and the trade with the Nabataeans (The people from Petra) that made the city flourished during the Roman time, for it wasn't on the normal trading route. Various invasions and an earthquake in 747 laid the city deserted until nineteen century. Today it's one of the biggest Roman sites outside Italy and popular with tourists as well as locals.

In the middle of residential area lies this ordinary house-turned-museum. The house was used by the group of Kuwaiti freedom fighters, who went heavily under fire for ten long hours, when they resisted arrest during the Iraqi occupation on February 24th, 1991. Some died during the fight, some got captured and tortured to dead, while few survived by hiding in the attic. The house has been kept as it was with bullet holes and blown off pieces. It'sobering insight into how Kuwait was under the Gulf War, as this was just one of many attacks – particularly, as most other marks from the war have been erased everywhere else.

The most impressive ruin in Lebanon. Besides being located in the middle of "modern" Baalbek town, the site can offer several magnificent Roman's temples. The one for Jupiter is the grandest, unequalled in the world, with columns soaring 23m into the air, where six still stands today. The foundation consists of some of biggest building block, some weighing about 800 tonnes. It is thought that it have taken more than 120 years to complete the temple complex, though different Roman Emperors still added to the complex centuries after. Another temple is the one of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Smaller than Jupiter's, but still bigger than Parthenon in Athens, it's one of the best preserved in the world with beautiful decorations, where you can still make out the fine details - along with semi-ancient graffiti.

This ancient town claims to be the oldest inhabited city in the world. About 7000 years ago, long before the Greek and the Romans, this town started out as small fishing settlement and turned into a powerful city-state with flourishing trade. To this day it still has its small port, apparently also the oldest in the world. The ruin of the old town does not look like much, which is one of the charming characters of this tranquil site. A "newer" crusade castle (12th century), half a roman amphitheater and a few columns are the main leftovers, but it is the maze of crumbling walls covered in vegetation that makes Byblos special. In spring time the whole place burst into colours with wildflowers.

The Holiday Inn hotel had hardly opened it doors in Beirut, when the civil war broke out in 1975. The fighting was taken to the streets, where it went from alley to alley and house to house. The city got divided by the Green Line with Christian forces occupying the East side and Muslims on the West side. By being one of the tallest buildings in town the Holiday Inn was sought after by snipers - and people shooting after snipers. Though the war ended in 1990 and most parts of Beirut has been through a facelift, the bullet riddled Holiday Inn building still stands empty and untouched as a ghostly memory of the war.

If only in ultra-Modern Doha, it's hard to see any sense of history in Qatar. One needs are a bit of an effort to get out of town and see the country's only UNESCO World Heritage site. Al Zubarah Archaeological Site lies in the north of the country... not really near anything. The thing is, Zubarah was neither unique or special in a series of fortified trading towns that dotted the region. But it's the closet thing the country has to history of architectural value. The fort, which is the crown is in the jewel, was actually only built in 1938, long after the town had been abandoned. But still, for those tired of skyscrapers of the city, there always a remote desert fort to visit.

Not far from the tombs of UNESCO World Heritage listed Madain Saleh is the leftover from another ancient kingdom. The Dadan Kingdom predates that of Madain Saleh with several hundred years. Since the modern city of Al Ula probably is built on top of the ancient city of Dadan, not much is visible today. The archaeological site is located at the foot of the red sheer cliffs. The most fascinating are probably the square-shaped tombs, which were dug into the cliff face probably around 5th century BC.