PALMYRA

Palmyra is an amazing place. It borders a palmery around an oasis in a desert so empty that, at one stage, we didn't see a blade of grass for 50km. It isn't surprising that the city was lost and forgotten for 600 years.

The first ruin we entered was the beautiful Temple of Baal Shamin, built in AD 150 in honour of a Canaanite deity:

If you look carefully, to the right of the temple, on the hill in the background, is a 12th century Arab fortress, the Qal’at Ibn Ma’an, which we visited later in the day. Entering the temple, there was beautiful stonework, magnificently preserved after nearly two millenia:There was also a tree that will surely, in the fullness of time, destroy the building that shelters it! Leaving the temple, we soon came to the entrance to the Roman part of the site:These arches are large, as may be judged from the apparently small size of the camels sheltering in the right-hand arch. (The camels were awaiting tourists for a quick canter through the place. Later in the day, bus loads of Japanese arrived, and galloped through the ruins determined to see them in the five minutes remaining before the bus left). Ahead is the main street in Roman Palmyra, 1.2km long, and lined with shops, official buildings and a theatre.

The monumental arches led off to official buildings. The steps on the pillars used to hold statues, most have which have been lost, but a few remain and are on show in the Museum. One of these arches led to the theatre, magnificently restored and a feature of a son e lumiere show on summer evenings:At the intersection of the main street with the principal side street is the tetrapylon, a formal fountain marking the junction. The pink columns are made of granite imported from Aswan in Egypt. How they travelled here is a mystery!

Turning back along the Roman Main Street, and trying to imagine what it would have been like when there were shopa on either side, we left Roman Palmyra and entered the Temple of Baal. This is the grand entrance:The holes in the walls used to hold keystones that locked the structure together and helped resist earthquakes - many have fallen out over the centuries. In the Temple, there were altars at each end. The Traveller sits in front of one, lost in contemplation:Outside again, the figures at the base of the fluted columns give some idea of the scale of the whole: We felt we had done enough walking for a while, so drove up to the Qal'at Ibn Ma'an, which was perched on a sloping, rocky outctop and seemed ready to slide into the depths at any moment. The view from the fortress was the most spectacular thing about it:You can see the whole site, from the Temple of Baal in the distance, to the Roman highway curving below. There is also a good view of the palmery, stretching our across the desert. Individual trees belong to people living in Palmyra, and are passed on from one generation to the next.

Refreshed, we returned to the site and were promptly struck by the afternoon sandstorm:The tower graves are starting to disappear, and within minutes the tetrapylon had also gone, while we huddled under our umbrellas, nominally to keep the sun at bay. Within about 15 minutes a centimetre of sand had fallen, and it became clear how this huge city had become lost to the world. Once it had passed, the sky cleared, and we made our way to Diocletian's Camp, on the hillside near the tower graves:A fine sunset. We were thoroughly ruined out, and returned to our hotel, a delicious supper, and dreams of past glory.