Monumental Arch of Palmyra

Stand still for a moment and feel the wind. It comes off the open desert, dry and warm, and it carries fine dust that settles on your sleeves. The stone around you has a soft honey colour. In early light it looks almost gold, and at noon it turns pale and chalky. Somewhere beyond the ruins, the date palms of the oasis move in the breeze. This is Palmyra, called Tadmur in Arabic, and you are standing where one of its best-known monuments once rose.

The Monumental Arch stood on the Great Colonnade, the long main street that ran through the ancient city. Rows of tall columns lined both sides of that street, and many of them still stand today. Shops, porticoes, and public buildings once opened onto it. Merchants, camel drivers, priests, and officials all walked this route. The arch marked an important point along the way, close to the eastern end of the street, where the city's great sanctuary waited.

Most scholars date the arch to the reign of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, around the turn of the third century. Palmyra was then part of the Roman world, but it kept a strong local identity. Its people spoke Aramaic, worshipped their own gods, and wrote inscriptions in their own script beside Greek ones. So this arch is Roman in form, yet it was carved by local hands, from local limestone, for a city that was proud of its own character.

Here is a detail many visitors never notice. The Great Colonnade is not perfectly straight. At this point, the street changes direction. A simple arch would have made that bend look awkward. Instead, the builders gave the monument a wedge-shaped plan, so that each face looked straight down its own section of street. Whichever way you approached, the arch appeared to line up perfectly. It was a quiet piece of design that solved a real problem.

The arch had three openings. A tall central passage was flanked by two smaller ones on either side. The central opening was for the main traffic of the street, while the side passages served people on foot under the colonnades. The surfaces were richly carved. Bands of leaves, vines, and geometric patterns ran across the stone. When you look at surviving fragments nearby, you can still see how deep and crisp the carving once was.

To understand why a desert town could afford such work, think about water and trade. Palmyra grew around a spring at the edge of the Syrian desert. That water made it a natural stop for caravans. Goods moved through here between the Mediterranean coast and the lands to the east, toward Mesopotamia and beyond. Silk, spices, and other luxury goods passed through Palmyrene hands. The profits paid for temples, tombs, and grand streets like this one.

The city's most famous figure lived a few generations after the arch was built. Queen Zenobia ruled Palmyra in the third century and challenged Rome itself. Her forces took control of wide territories in the eastern Mediterranean. Rome answered. The emperor Aurelian marched east, defeated her armies, and took the city in the early 270s. Palmyra never fully recovered its earlier power. But the arch, the colonnade, and the temples stayed in place, slowly weathering through the centuries that followed.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European travellers began to arrive and record what they saw. In 1753, the British scholar Robert Wood published a large illustrated book on the ruins. Its engravings spread images of Palmyra across Europe and influenced architects there. Over time, the arch became one of the most photographed views of the site. Many people who never travelled to Syria still knew its outline, framed against the desert sky.

Then came the war. In 2015, the armed group known as the Islamic State captured Palmyra. That summer, they killed Khaled al-Asaad, the retired head of antiquities at the site. He had spent decades studying and protecting these ruins. In the months that followed, the group destroyed several major monuments, including the Temple of Bel. In October 2015, they blew up the Monumental Arch. Photographs from that time show the central span fallen, with broken stone across the street.

The story did not end there. In 2016, a reduced-scale replica of the arch was carved in stone using digital models made from photographs. It stood for a few days in Trafalgar Square in London, and later travelled to other cities. Some people welcomed it as a gesture of solidarity. Others questioned whether a copy far away could mean much for Syria. Either way, it showed how widely this one monument was recognised.

Look now at what remains in front of you. Parts of the structure survived the blast, and many fallen blocks lie close to where they stood. Archaeologists value this, because original stones can sometimes be placed back in position. Discussions about restoration continue, and they raise hard questions. How much should be rebuilt? How much should be left as it is? The answer depends on careful study, on resources, and on what Syrians themselves choose.

Turn and take in the wider scene. To the east lies the site of the Temple of Bel, once the religious heart of the city. To the west, the colonnade runs on toward the theatre and other public buildings. Beyond the ruins you can see the modern town of Tadmur and the green line of the palm groves. On the hills above, an Arab castle watches over the whole valley.

Before you walk on, spend one more minute here. Notice the colour of the stone and the long shadows of the columns. Listen to the wind, and maybe a bird in the palms. The arch you came to see is broken, but the street it marked is still here, and so is the bend it once hid so cleverly. As you continue along the colonnade, you are walking the same line that caravans followed nearly two thousand years ago.