Featured places
Mosques, caravanserais, souks, museums — and why they are worth the walk.
35 Places
The Temple of Nabu at Palmyra
A 2nd-century temple at Palmyra built for Nabu, the Babylonian god of writing and wisdom. Where it stands by the colonnaded street, what is known and its state.
Palmyra · Roman — reign of Hadrian
The Funerary Temple at Palmyra (Tomb 86)
A family tomb dressed as a temple, with a six-column portico at the west end of Palmyra’s colonnaded street. The only tomb inside the walls: what to see and where.
Palmyra · Roman
The Baths of Diocletian at Palmyra
Four giant granite columns mark the entrance to a Roman bath on Palmyra’s colonnaded street. Each is over 12 metres tall; what else survives and where to find it.
Palmyra · Roman — renovated under Diocletian
The Agora of Palmyra and the Tariff Court
Where Palmyra’s caravans paid tax: a 71 by 84 metre courtyard with 11 gates, and the court where the tariff of AD 137 was found. What remains and how long to allow.
Palmyra · Roman
The Roman Theatre at Apamea
On a slope above the Orontes valley, Apamea’s theatre was 139 metres across, among the largest in the Roman world. Only an eighth is excavated; access unconfirmed.
Hama · Hellenistic origins — Roman
Tell Seker al-Aheimar
A Neolithic mound in the Khabur valley west of Tell Tamer, where Upper Mesopotamia’s oldest known water well and a unique painted clay figurine were excavated.
Hasakah · Pre-Pottery Neolithic B — Proto-Hassuna
Tell Mohammed Diyab
A large mound 7 kilometres south-east of Tell Leilan, dug by a French team from 1987: a town of the land of Apum, a stop for Assyrian merchants, four settlements.
Qamishli · Bronze Age — Middle Assyrian — Seleucid-Parthian
Tall Mahra (Tell Sheikh Hasan)
An Abbasid town in the Balikh valley between Raqqa and Hisn Maslama: a square wall 450 metres a side with a church and a mosque inside. Looted; access unconfirmed.
Raqqa · Hellenistic — Abbasid; largest in the Abbasid period
Tell es-Sinn (Tall as-Sin)
A walled Byzantine town south-east of Deir ez-Zor and its necropolis of rock-cut tombs, over 163 of them excavated and fully published in 2008. Access unconfirmed.
Deir ez-Zor · Late Roman — Byzantine
Tell al-Hasakah
A mound in central Hasakah on the Khabur, where a 2008-2011 dig exposed a Byzantine cathedral, a baptistery and a Neo-Assyrian building; access today is unclear.
Hasakah · Neo-Assyrian — Byzantine — Arab-Islamic
Tell al-Kasra
A Byzantine town with a pentagonal mudbrick wall on the Euphrates north-west of Deir ez-Zor; its bathhouse held the region’s first figural mosaic. Access unknown.
Deir ez-Zor · Late Roman — Byzantine; into the early Islamic period
Qreiye-Ayyash Roman Fort
A square legionary fort 220 metres a side, built under Septimius Severus above the Euphrates west of Deir ez-Zor and used for only a few decades. Access unconfirmed.
Deir ez-Zor · Roman (Severan dynasty)