Five years on from the start of the Syrian civil war, the Christian population is a fraction of what it once was. Despite the hopes of the current ceasefire, the urge to leave remains strong

Driving into Homs, I had the distinct feeling that I was going back in time and visiting a city blitzed during the Second World War. Not a single building stood intact – wall after wall was peppered by gunfire, windows were blown out with curtains flapping in the stiff breeze, jagged walls giving way here and there to piles of rubble. An eerie silence pervaded everything; there was nobody to be seen.

Entering Homs’ Old City, we stopped outside a church, the seat of the Syrian Orthodox Archbishop Selwanos Alnemeh, our guide that afternoon. He beckoned us inside St Mary’s, which was built, we were told, over a church dating back to AD 50. Amid the icons and pews, the candles and low archways, you could well believe that two millennia had passed since Christianity first arrived here.