Around 3½ hours northeast of Damascus, this town of 50,000 is renowned for the adjacent UNESCO World Heritage ruins of Palmyra, the Roman-era caravan city built up largely between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, when it grew rich funneling trade between Rome and Persia. It symbolizes Syria's tragedy more powerfully than almost any other destination: ISIS seized the site twice between 2015 and 2017, holding it for roughly ten months in total, and used the time to dynamite the temples of Bel and Baalshamin as well as the Monumental Arch, and to behead the site's elderly head of antiquities when he refused to reveal hidden artifacts. Yet the surviving Great Colonnade, Roman theatre, and funerary towers remain hauntingly beautiful in the desert light, watched over by the 13th-century Mamluk fortress of Qalaat ibn Maan on a hilltop above, later reinforced and renamed for the 17th-century Druze emir Fakhr al-Din II.
Access has improved again in 2025–26, though the modern town offers only a handful of basic hotels and simple restaurants, checkpoints remain common on the road in, and the small site museum stays closed. Given that still thin infrastructure, most visitors — and tour operators — currently treat Palmyra as a long day trip from Damascus rather than an overnight stay.
Read more in my post Syria Is Finally Free, but Is It Finally Ready to Visit Again? Plus 5 of Its Top Destinations.
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