But a crackdown on protests that activists say has killed at least 850 people has thrown parts of the country into violent unrest, and most embassies advised their citizens to leave at once.

In the streets where Arabic students and backpackers used to buy Oriental knick-knacks, there are only plain-clothed security forces and grumpy shopkeepers.

The National Museum in Damascus, for years a joke with visitors for its enigmatic signs and gloomy displays of priceless Roman statues, is currently getting a facelift, and workers are busily painting and decorating bright new galleries.

But aside from Syrian art students drawing in the sunlit sculpture garden, there are scant visitors to admire the new look, nor are the bored attendants expecting many this summer.

"People do want change, but Syria was growing," said one young man in a ceramics shop in Damascus. "Now was not the time to bring down the government -- this year was going to be such a big year for Syrian tourism." He and many other shopkeepers said business was terrible. Hotel owners have had to fire waiters and cleaners.

The death of tourism is only the first sign of the economic devastation that recent upheaval has inflicted.

Since Bashar al-Assad inherited power from his father Hafez in 2000, Syria has undergone a degree of economic liberalization; it has built trade relationships, particularly with Europe and neighboring Turkey, and encouraged private banking and business.

The national GDP has more than tripled from $20 billion in 2000 to over $60 billion last year. For many people, particularly the urban middle classes, life has changed enormously.

The proliferation of banks and credit allowed people to buy things -- cars, houses, electric goods -- that they could not previously afford. Fewer trade restrictions have meant that there are far more of these goods on the market, from China and Turkey among others.

The main architect of the more open economy was Abdullah al-Dardari, deputy prime minister for economic affairs since 2005, who speaks English and was popular with the reformists at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

But he was not so popular among poor Syrians. Oil revenues in Syria are drying up fast, and the reforms were paid for by withdrawing fuel subsidies and state provision of education and healthcare.

"Of course people feel they have been hurt by the gradual withdrawal of the state from areas they used to be involved in," said a Damascus economist who asked not to be named. "The gap between Syria's rich and poor has grown as the economy has liberalized." Many protesters also cite endemic corruption as a primary grievance, pointing out that friends and relatives of the president control huge chunks of the economy.

Dardari was not part of the new government hastily assembled by the president when he unveiled concessions to the protesters, a move that the economist called "highly symbolic." The message, he said, is that Syria is moving back toward the old social policies.