Damascus · Syria
Heritage is not what survived. It’s who kept it.
Zanzalakht is a Syrian non-profit cultural foundation dedicated to preserving, revitalising and reimagining the country’s cultural life through heritage restoration, artistic production, education and cultural exchange.
Why the zanzalakht?
The tree nobody plants.
Unlike the city’s celebrated jasmine and bitter orange, the Zanzalakht is rarely recognised for its beauty. Yet it survives drought, neglect and time, offering shade and renewal in difficult conditions. Its resilience has made it a quiet symbol of endurance and regeneration, qualities at the heart of the foundation’s mission.
Our view · 01 · Winter
We do not mourn ruins.
A damaged building is not a tragedy to photograph. It is an unfinished sentence. When we look at what is still standing, we are really looking for the person who kept it standing: the family, the carpenter, the neighbour. That person is the heritage. The stone is only the evidence.
Our view · 02 · Spring
We restore so a place can be used again.
Restoration that ends in a locked door is decoration. We rebuild a house only as far as it takes for someone to work, teach, cook and argue inside it again. Beit Hayat is where we prove it: an abandoned Damascene house returning to use, not to display.
Our view · 03 · Summer
Culture is a room full of people.
Heritage is not an object in a vitrine; it is a practice repeated often enough to survive. So we fill the courtyard (residencies, workshops, screenings, long arguments after dinner) and we let the practice do the preserving. Attendance is the conservation method.
Our view · 04 · Autumn
What we gather, we give away.
Every season the work becomes film, archive and published story, and then it leaves us. Knowledge held privately does not survive the next winter; it has to be handed on to be kept at all. Then the year turns, and the tree starts over.
What we do
Six ways we keep a culture living.
Zanzalakht works across restoration, production, education and exchange.
Heritage restoration
Reviving buildings, crafts and living memory.
Artistic production
Residencies, exhibitions, film and performance.
Community & gathering
Places where people meet to make and to share.
Craft & building
Traditional, responsible restoration practice.
Education
Workshops passing skills to a new generation.
Cultural exchange
Connecting Damascus with the wider world.
Our founding project · Coming soon
Beit Hayat
An abandoned Damascene house restored into a Living Cultural House for art, heritage and collective memory.
- Location
- Old Damascus
- Building
- Historic house, 600+ m²
- Duration
- 24 months
Our projects
One house, and the beginning of a network.
Beit Hayat in Old Damascus is the first. Eight more places are being explored, from Sweida in the south to Latakia on the coast, Aleppo in the north and Deir Ezzor in the east: a network as varied as Syria itself. A Syria Exhibition is also in preparation.
-
Damascus · the first house
Old Damascus
An abandoned Damascene house becoming a living cultural house for art, heritage and collective memory.
Beit Hayat · coming soon
-
The Qalamoun mountains
Maaloula
A village cut into a mountain gorge, keeping one of the world’s oldest living languages.
Being explored
-
The south
Sweida
Black basalt villages and vineyards on the slopes of Jabal al-Arab.
Being explored
-
The centre
Salamieh
A town with a distinctive tradition of open civic and cultural life.
Being explored
-
The coast
Latakia
A port city between the Mediterranean and the mountains.
Being explored
-
The north
Aleppo
One of the oldest cities in the world, its souks gathered under the citadel.
Being explored
-
The north-west
Idlib
Olive country, and the stone villages of the Dead Cities.
Being explored
-
The east
Deir Ezzor
Where the Euphrates crosses the eastern desert.
Being explored
-
The Jazira
Qamishli
A border town on the Jazira plain, close to the ancient mounds above the Khabur river.
Being explored
Meet the founder
“For me, the story of Beit Hayat began with a woman, not a building.”
Lina Sinjab Founder, CEO
A Syrian journalist, documentary filmmaker and cultural practitioner whose work over more than two decades has explored conflict, memory, identity and the human stories behind political change across the Middle East.
As a BBC correspondent and independent filmmaker, Lina has documented the resilience of communities across the region and worked to preserve stories that risk being forgotten.
Articles
Notes from the courtyard.
Writing from the people doing the work: restorers, artists, researchers and neighbours.
Announcement
Zanzalakht is founded
A Syrian non-profit cultural foundation dedicated to preserving, revitalising and reimagining the country’s cultural life.
Beit Hayat
A house named after Life
Lina Sinjab on her mother, a Damascene courtyard, and two decades of fighting to save one house.
The library
Four thousand books
Two members of the foundation have donated their personal libraries. The collection is ready; the room is not, yet.
Letters from the courtyard
Get the next letter by email.
News from the foundation and Beit Hayat, open calls for artists and new writing from the people doing the work.
Get involved
Help keep culture living in Syria.
Support the foundation
A gift, in money, in kind or in time, goes where it is needed most.
Support Beit Hayat
Buy a stone, name a book or a room, or fund a phase of the restoration.
Write to us
Partnerships, press, collaborations, or something that belongs in the archive.