Jabri house is one of the oldest houses in the old city of Damascus, it was built in 1737. Today the house is an open cafe restaurant, allowing everyone to admire its beauty and wonderful architecture... Jabri house carries the features of traditional Damascene architecture and interior design. It is a two-floor complex comprising 23 rooms including the main hall and a large interior yard with the usual pond at its center, with lemon and jasmine trees releasing their fragrance after sunset. It also includes an attractive "leewan" (a roofed part of the yard with high decorated walls), and an overlooking balcony.  The main hall is richly decorated and ornamented according to  the taste and style of the time, with wall height of 18 meters.

The story of Beit Jabri

A City of Many Mansions: JABRI'S HOUSE – "BEIT JABRI"

My grandfather, Mohammad Talaat, the father of Syria's famed nationalist poet Shafiq Jabri, purchased this house in 1905, during the years of the Ottoman Empire. Our family lived here from 1905 until 1973. We moved out in the 1970s when the women of the family could no longer run the mansion because of old age, and because they could no longer afford the expenses of such a lavish residence. The years passed and the house was abandoned to desertion and forgetfulness. It started cracking in different corners, and collapsing in others. It became a sad, sad mansion, damaged by the heavy burden of years and misfortunes. Then seeing that the mansion was forgotten, and completely neglected, somebody "invaded" the deserted house, entering without permission and transferring it into a warehouse for carpentry workers.

This alarmed the Jabri family, but its many heirs, scattered all over the world, refused to restore or invest in the house. I was too young at the time, and had neither the solution nor the means to do anything to preserve this wonderful house. I felt a combination of sorrow, pain, and passion towards this mansion, which I loved from childhood. I had spent endless hours here, playing in the courtyard, beneath the famed bitter oranges of Damascus, and the Jasmine on its wide windows. That is what Damascus is known and remembered for, its Jasmine and bitter oranges. Our house, Beit Jabri, had a lot of both.

Ever since then, I began to dream of preserving its house, and restoring it to its past liveliness. I wanted to do something for this house of which beautiful design and deep-rooted antiques dazzled all its beholders. I decided to transform it into a restaurant during the early 1990s, when investment in Old Damascus was becoming popular and restaurants were becoming trendy. A restaurant, I believed, would earn enough revenue for its restoration, and at the same time, become a venue for everybody to enjoy. I wanted a simple restaurant—an antique house for everybody to relax in actually, more so than a restaurant. To materialize, the dream needed long and difficult work. It needed time and patience. Step one was to convince the number of heirs scattered all over the world, of transforming the family mansion into a restaurant. This was not easy.

I started restoration slowly, bringing a friend to help finance the project. My friends gave the address of the house to others, people
started talking about it, coming in as small crowds to enjoy the fountain and evening whisper. They watched the house coming back to life, day-by-day, had a cup of tea in the courtyard; I presented food myself. The quarter's inhabitants and neighbors were taken by surprise of the strange movement in the house, and astonished by the strangers who came to the house, after so many years of neglect and abandonment, knocking the door, which magically opened for them, and  entered. The neighbors became suspicious, filing a complaint to the Governorate of Damascus, which closed the house, by sealing wax, claiming that we did not have a permit to renovate the mansion.

Every time we opened to continue work, a problem would arise, forcing us to close again. If anything, this increased my determination to transform my dream into reality. Pretty soon, the quarter's inhabitants as well as governorate officers started to understand and respond positively to the accomplished fact. Today, it is one of the prized treasures of Old Damascus. And everybody takes pride in it.

Now, the dream house is a reality, for everybody to experience and enjoy.