Palmyra (city of palms).
For thousands of years the location of Palmyra has been an important site in Syria. It is the shortest route from the Arab gulf to the Mediterranean and was also a major stopping point on the ancient silk route. The Roman Emperor Hadrian visited the city in 129 A.D. and recognised Palmyra as a ‘free city.’ For over four hundred years the city enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity as a centre of trade and the crossroad between east and west.
Today much evidence remains of the splendour of this ancient city in the centre of the Syrian desert. As you walk down the great colonnade of a thousand columns, stretching more than a thousand metres, you get a taste of the past grandeur of this great city. Columns are crowned by wide Corinthian capitals and the moulded alcoves half way up the shafts supported statues of public figures. At the end of the colonnade is a large theatre still used today for outdoor concerts. The temple of Bel with its immense courtyard was a place of sacrifice and evidence clearly remains of a large sacrificial altar.
On the slopes of the hills east of the city there are ancient tombs. The fascinating hypogeum tower tomb links a network of underground chambers inside the tomb tower. These tower tombs were built to receive the bodies of families over a period of two centuries and today you can ascend into these tall structures and see the evidence of hundreds of alcoves in the walls on each level that were used to house the bodies.
We had reached Palmyra by road from Damascus, a journey of 245 km on a modern highway. A welcome pit stop in the desert is the Bagdad cafe a quirky roadside refreshment station well worth visiting
