A circular building displaying a 360° painted-and-modelled panorama of the October War of 1973 (also called the Yom Kippur War), in which Syria and Egypt attacked Israeli positions in the Golan Heights and Sinai. The visit lasts about an hour. Visitors are seated on a slowly rotating platform; lights and sound effects accompany a recorded narration in Arabic, English and Russian.
The hyper-realism is striking — burnt-out tanks fade seamlessly into painted ones, real spent shell casings are scattered on the foreground, and the perspective is impossible to fault. It is unambiguously a Syrian government propaganda piece, but a remarkable artefact of socialist-realist art. Just west of Umayyad Square.