A French travel agency is controversially offering cultural tours of Syria, insisting it is now safe despite “formal” foreign foreign ministry warnings to steer clear of the war-wracked country or face investigation.

“Syria is opening to tourism and at the request of our Syrian friends, we are once again proposing trips to this destination,” writes Clio, the only large-scale travel agency in Europe to offer such tours in a country ravaged by an eight-year civil war. “Be the first to dive back into this multi-millennial history."

The tour offer comes as the last redoubt of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) in the eastern Syrian village of Baguz is expected to fall to the Kurdish and coalition forces imminently but the situation remains unstable in many areas.

Speaking to the Telegraph this week, Ilham Ahmed, co chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces, said: “In Raqqa there are daily explosions, kidnappings, and violence. Likewise in Deir Ezzor.”

On its travel advisory page, the French foreign ministry warns: “Nothing guarantees the safety or the respect of people’s fundamental rights. French nationals, it added, “run particularly high risks of terror attacks and kidnapping for political or criminal ends”. It calls on all its citizens to “leave the country”.