Welcome to the A-Z Guidebook Link Up. If you would like to join, read the A-Z Guidebook tab at the top of the blog and write a travel post relating to the letter of the month.
*Hello to newcomers who may be testing the water and to those who have also returned. It’s always interesting to read about new or favourite destinations through someone else’s eyes. This month:
P or Purple
I had quite a few choices when it came to P. I selected a photo almost as soon as I started hosting A-Z but more recently shied away from it, because of events in recent months. In the end, it’s hard to deny the the imprint this city left on my memory so I have come full circle. I am talking about Palmyra in Syria.
Gone but not forgotten…
Palmyra is (was) full of ancient Roman ruins and to be honest, when you saw as many Roman ruins as we did in 18 months, you became slightly jaded. What the ruins in Palmyra had over most of the others (except for the impressive ampitheatre in Pula, Croatia but that’s another P story) was their remote location. Over 200 km north of Damascus, the ruins were truly in the middle of the desert. This meant that from a climatic and geographic perspective, they were very well preserved.
That was of course until those fools came and blew most of it up including this 1800 year old Monumental Arch or Arch of Triumph which celebrated a Roman victory over the Persians. It’s gone now but in this world of technology, it is not forgotten. In fact, a replica has been recreated using architectural 3D printing from photographs taken by snap happy tourists such as myself. Who even knew there was an Institute of Digital Archaeology? It seems that in the end, the Arch has triumphed after all.
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Wow. I have never heard of this institute. How wonderful !! Dontcha just love technology? So bloody sad about these wonders being destroyed.
I had seen the story on BBC but only when I was researching the name of the arch for this story that I realised that (sadly), it was the same arch.
I didn’t know about the 3D museum either. Must look into that. I guess no one will be traveling to Syria as tourists anytime in the near future.
It just gets worse every day. There will be nothing and no one left and in another 500 years people will visit and say ‘Here are the ruins of Aleppo’.
I can relate to your ruins weariness. Travels can create gallery and museum overload as well. How sad that misguided fools want to destroy antiquities.
Yes, museum overload. Mind you, I’ve been to some good ones but they are typically cultural ones such as the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody. I’m sure we would be all happy to traipse through Palmyra though if we could have it back.