Palmyra
A caravan city in the desert, its colonnade still standing after everything. Go for the silence at sunrise.
Palmyra grew rich taxing the caravans between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean. What is left is a kilometre of columns, a theatre, tower tombs and the ruin of the Temple of Bel, blown up in 2015 and now being surveyed for reconstruction.
The site is three hours from Damascus by road, past Homs. Most guests come for one night in the modern town of Tadmor, walk the ruins in the last light and again at dawn, and drive on north to Hama or back to the capital.
This is the one place where a specialist guide changes everything. Ours were trained by the Department of Antiquities and can tell you which stones are original and which are 1930s French concrete.