Palmyra: the vanishing pearl of the desert

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Palmyra: the vanishing pearl of the desert

Published: 26 Jan. 2026, 00:05

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Kim Bong-ryeol

The author is an architect and a former president of the Korea National University of Arts.

I encountered the ancient city of Palmyra in the heart of the Syrian desert. A wadi once flowed here and springs sustained oasis agriculture, earning it the name “the city of palms.” During the first century Pax Romana, Palmyra flourished as a hub of inland trade, and in the third century Queen Zenobia even proclaimed the Palmyrene Empire. When the ruins of the city center were rediscovered, they reshaped paradigms of European urban planning in the seventeenth century.

The ruins of Palmyra in Syria [WIKIPEDIA]

From before the Common Era, Palmyra developed as a distinctive city rooted in local religious traditions and caravan trade, and it was rebuilt on a grand scale in the third century. At its core lay a monumental colonnaded avenue stretching 1.1 kilometers. Along an 11-meter-wide road rose more than 500 columns, each about nine meters high, forming an imposing processional way. Beginning at a triumphal arch, the avenue bent slightly at a point marked by four tetrapylons and ended at the funerary temple.

In front of the arch stood the vast Temple of Bel, dedicated to the city’s protective deity. The boulevard was lined with public buildings such as a theater and great baths, as well as temples to Nebo, Baalshamin, Baal-Hammon and Allat. These were all local Middle Eastern gods, and after conversion to Christianity in the fourth century, small Byzantine churches were also built.

A large portion of the city center was occupied by the agora. Despite the familiar name, it was not an open Greek-style market but more akin to a caravansary for merchants. Sculptures of prominent citizens were placed on some 200 columns, making it a civic hall of memory. Outside the city walls, more than 50 tower tombs were scattered over a kilometer, forming a valley of the dead. Together, these remains attest to a self-governing city that existed under Roman rule.

Although Roman construction techniques were used, the functions and decorative methods of the buildings were thoroughly local. The Temple of Bel, with its Mesopotamian-style enclosure walls and Roman colonnades, exemplified this fusion. Palmyra stood at the crossroads of Mesopotamian, Roman, Persian and Byzantine civilizations. In 2015, Islamic State destroyed major monuments, including the Temple of Bel, under the pretext of iconoclasm. Scholars worldwide are pursuing digital reconstruction, but many irreplaceable ruins remain unrestored. The loss underscores how fragile cultural heritage becomes amid prolonged conflict and political paralysis, leaving future generations with fragments, images and questions rather than a living landscape of history and memory.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.