Palmyra’s ancient theater, seen on Feb. 21, was used by ISIS for public executions during the group’s takeover of the region. Syrians are hoping for a return of tourists now that the country has reopened to international visitors after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad to rebel fighters last December.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
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PALMYRA, Syria — This ancient city, once one of the most important stops on the Silk Road, bears the scars of ISIS attacks and more than a decade of Syria’s civil war. It also carries Syrian hopes of reviving the country’s rich archaeological legacy.
Palmyra is a UNESCO World Heritage Site — inhabited for thousands of years before it became a thriving Roman city on the crossroads between East and West in the 1st century CE.
The ancient site is largely deserted now, as is the nearby modern city, also named Palmyra.
Residents are hoping for a return of tourists now that the country has reopened to international visitors after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad to rebel fighters last December. But the sound of gunfire in the distance from Syrian government fighters and U.S.-backed Syrian militia forces controlling the area is a reminder that not all is stable.
On this drizzly day in late January, Mahmoud Botman, a fighter from the U.S.-supported Syrian Free Army, points out the toppled blocks from one of the many sites destroyed by ISIS in 2015 after its takeover of the region. Russian-backed Syrian forces retook Palmyra in 2016 — before ISIS briefly captured it again — and finally drove out the Islamist militant group in 2017.
“I was here in Tadmor city,” in 2015, says Botman, using the Arabic name for Palmyra. “They [ISIS] placed explosives at the temple here and detonated them.”
The temple where he is standing — Baalshamin — was dedicated to a Mesopotamian god of the sky and was one of the main features of the sprawling oasis city where caravans carried silk, spices and other goods between Asia and Europe.
Before 2015, the ruins of Palmyra were considered among the most intact of the vast Roman Empire. ISIS believed the pre-Islamic site was blasphemous. The group beheaded Palmyra’s head of antiquities, Khaled al-Assad, and then systematically blew up several of the ancient city’s most important monuments.
The explosion at the Baalshamin temple toppled its towering stone columns, sending the roof and walls tumbling and leaving only piles of huge stone blocks. ISIS also destroyed the landmark group of stone pillars at the end of a colonnaded street and destroyed part of the façade of the ancient theater before using it for public executions.
A young boy selling souvenirs above the ruins of Palmyra in February.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
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Residents’ pride in the ancient site
The few remaining residents of the modern city, many of whose grandparents and great-grandparents lived in the ruins of the ancient capital before the new city was created, take strong pride in Palmyra and its powerful Queen Zenobia, who ruled in the 3rd century.
“As a woman, she used the military and expanded her empire from Antioch to Egypt,” says Botman, pointing out pharaonic columns gifted to her from ancient Egyptian rulers.
On one of the colonnaded streets, young volunteers from Palmyra roll stone blocks into place to prevent cars from driving into the ruins and doing further damage. During the civil war, looting of archaeological sites in Syria dramatically increased.
“We have to protect even the small pieces,” says Mohammad Shaker, 24, from the Palmyra Youth Gathering, which has worked to clear debris from the citadel on a hill overlooking the ancient site as well as repair sidewalks.
The volunteers are also trying to help bring back modern Palmyra after the country’s devastating civil war. At least 100,000 civilians were believed killed by the regime and during fighting in the 13-year-long conflict.
“We have the energy — everything can be restored and in a few years it will be rebuilt,” he says. “But the young people and the children who died, that is the most devastating destruction. That we cannot change.”
“Palmyra, the ancient city, is like our mother,” said Mohammed Fares, who works for a Spanish-based conservation group, Heritage for Peace. “Every stone has a memory for me.”
He said the group is waiting for the Syrian government to license non-governmental organizations to send in expert archaeologists and equipment to assess the damage to the ancient site.
Syrians are hoping for a return of tourists now that the country has reopened to international visitors after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad to rebel fighters last December.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
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Syrian regime, Russian and Iran-backed military action
The damage to both the ancient site and the modern city has been devastating.
Faced with civil war and threats from ISIS, former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turned to Russian forces and Iran-backed Syrian militias to retake Palmyra.
A 2017 report by the American Society of Overseas Research said recent military activity accounted for more damage than deliberate destruction in the ancient city of Palmyra and other sites it surveyed.
The Syrian government moved military forces into the ancient citadel overlooking Palmyra. And in 2016, Russia established a military base on the edge of the ancient city, within the protection zone established by UNESCO.
Russia said a year later the base was temporary. But signs of Russian presence remain years later. Months after the regime and its Russian allies retreated last December, the ground near a girls’ high school taken over by the Russian military is covered with burned and blackened documents, waterlogged books in Cyrillic script, pieces of computer equipment and an artillery shell — all apparently left by troops as they abandoned the site.
Russia offered to help restore damage done by ISIS. But it said that some sites were so badly damaged they could be rebuilt using only modern materials. Part of the ancient theater appears to have been repaired with concrete.
Less than half a mile away, the new city of Palmyra, established in the 1930s, has suffered even more devastation. Many of the houses in what was a city of 100,000 people are either destroyed or heavily damaged. As in much of the rest of Syria, there are only a few hours of electricity, no emergency services and no money to rebuild infrastructure.
“Ninety-nine percent of families were displaced north, to Homs or Damascus,” says Fares.
Many of the palm groves that gave the oasis city its name were razed by the Assad regime and its allies to eliminate cover for opposition fighters.
The ruins of the century-old Zenobia hotel overlooking the ancient city. Writer Agatha Christie and her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan were among the hotel’s guests in the 1920s.
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Prospects for rebuilding
The fall of the Assad regime opens the possibility of more stability and funds — and wider tourism to what had been largely a niche destination before the start of the civil war, with just a few thousand visitors a year.
At the century-old Zenobia Cham Palace Hotel overlooking the ancient city, the walls are marked with bullet holes. Fallen plaster and shattered glass cover the floors. A water-logged drinks menu, a remnant of the pre-ISIS days, advertises alcoholic cocktails. Writer Agatha Christie and her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan were among the hotel’s guests in the 1920s.
Inside the century-old Zenobia hotel overlooking the ancient city. The damaged hotel has fallen into disrepair, but has a storied history.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
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The nearby Palmyra Museum remains closed. The guard there, who declines to give his name as he is not authorized to speak to journalists, says he is under government instructions not to allow visitors because ISIS is still a threat. But he returns with a gift of postcards showing some of the museum’s treasures, including a famous statue of a lion damaged by ISIS.
Many of the antiquities in the Palmyra museum were sent to Damascus for safekeeping after the start of the civil war.
Palmyra, once one of the most important cities in the ancient world, seen here on Feb. 21.
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Syria’s new government blames Russia
In Damascus, the Syrian government’s interim head of antiquities, Anas Haj Zidane, says he blames Russia for damage to Palmyra and the U.N.’s cultural agency, UNESCO, for allowing Russian oversight over the archaeological site.
“When the Russians were present in Palmyra as a military presence, they vandalized and destroyed it,” he told NPR in January. “Their mission was a military delegation composed of officers, not specialists in antiquities.”
Krista Pikkat, UNESCO’s Culture and Emergencies Entity director, said the organization had no information on the claim of Russian involvement in damage to Palmyra. Russian authorities have not responded to NPR’s request for comment.
Pikkat said the organization was discussing with Syrian authorities reactivating monitoring missions to inspect endangered World Heritage Sites in the country.
At the National Museum of Damascus, glass cases hold tantalizing glimpses of the wealth of ancient Palmyra. They include delicate Roman glass containers for eyeliner and brightly colored fragments of silk and cotton garments, almost 2,000 years old.
The 11-foot-high stone Lion of al-Lat, damaged outside the Palmyra museum by ISIS, was pieced together and is now on display in the Damascus museum’s garden, amid orange trees filled with songbirds. A handful of Syrian visitors wander through the museum halls as the sound system quietly and inexplicably plays Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen in the background.
The 11-foot-high stone Lion of al-Lat, pieced back together after ISIS damaged it in Palmyra, is now on display in the Damascus museum’s garden amid orange trees filled with songbirds, Feb. 20.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
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The country’s long-time director of museums and antiquities, Mohammad Nazir Awad, seems delighted to guide visitors through the exhibits. The museum was closed for seven years at the height of the civil war.
“We need international cooperation because Syria cannot now with its humble internal capabilities after this brutal war and decades of corruption, provide everything that is required in the cultural sector,” he says. “I hope that Syria returns to the glory it had in the field of antiquities and more.”
Greg Dixon and Sangar Khaleel contributed reporting from Palmyra and Damascus.
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