Aleppo, one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, has an estimated 1.5 million residents on the government side, including thousands who have fled from the east, where the United Nations says about 275,000 are trapped by government forces, suffering shortages of food and water along with indiscriminate bombing.

This is my first visit since 2001, when I wandered around the bustling old souks, which date from medieval times; visited the ancient citadel that towers at Aleppo’s heart; and admired the gleaming uniformity of cream-colored stone-clad buildings in the wealthier districts that turn pink at sunset.

Now, the citadel has been returned to its original purpose as a military stronghold, with government troops perched behind its crenelated walls. Much of the old market, whose narrow passageways became a hide-out for rebels, lies burned and bombed.

I rode in from Damascus with a dozen other journalists on Wednesday. We made the final approach to Aleppo through a narrow, winding government-controlled corridor, crawling behind delivery trucks and minivans. The bus wound through earthen berms and collapsed buildings, then through a choke point that has changed hands several times. Shells kicked up dust and smoke in the distance.

Then, suddenly, we were in a seemingly functional city. The green buses that have been used to evacuate civilians and rebels from besieged areas were packed with commuters. Taxis knotted up at roundabouts decorated with fountains and newly installed solar panels. Residents are far better off than they were in 2014, when it was rebels who had besieged the government side.

But a closer look revealed small signs of war: Water distribution centers, with tanks filled by wells to supplement shortages. Generators rumbling on sidewalks, to mitigate power cuts that leave the streets pitch-dark at night. And, a few doors down from our hotel, a top-floor apartment smashed by a recent shell.

We asked for rooms facing west, away from the bulk of shelling, a war correspondent’s reflex. From a high window, we could see a dark plume of smoke, silhouetted against the sunset, rising over the southwestern neighborhoods, where rebels were trying to advance. Only the next morning did we realize that the eastern face of the hotel was checkered with boarded-up windows from years of shelling.