Roman Theatre at Palmyra

Stand still for a moment and feel the stone under your feet. It is pale limestone, warm by mid-morning, worn smooth in the centre and rough at the edges. The desert wind carries fine sand across the steps. When it drops, the silence is deep enough that you can hear your own footsteps come back to you from the curved seats. This is the Roman Theatre at Palmyra, a stage built for an audience in the middle of the Syrian desert.

Palmyra grew up around an oasis. The city's older name, Tadmur, is still the name of the modern town beside the ruins. For centuries this was a stopping point for caravans travelling between the Mediterranean coast and the lands along the Euphrates. Merchants brought goods from as far away as India and China. That trade made Palmyra wealthy, and wealth paid for stone. Temples, colonnades, tombs and this theatre all came out of that money.

The theatre dates to the second century of our era, when Palmyra was part of the Roman world. Rome governed here, but the city kept its own character. Its people spoke Aramaic, worshipped their own gods, and wore clothing that mixed Greek, Roman and Persian styles. So a theatre like this one is a little unusual. It follows a Roman plan, but it was built for a population that was only partly Roman in its habits and its language.

Look at the shape around you. The seating rises in a half circle, tier above tier, facing the stage. The lower rows are the best preserved. Below them is the orchestra, the flat semicircle at the foot of the seats. In Roman theatres, important guests often sat close to this area. Then comes the raised stage, and behind it the tall decorated wall that closed the view. That wall has a name: the scaenae frons, which simply means the front of the stage building.

That wall deserves a careful look. It was once lined with columns and framed doorways. At its centre is the main entrance, set back inside a curved niche. Archaeologists call this the royal door. Actors used these doors to make their entrances, and the architecture gave each one a sense of ceremony. The surviving columns and carved details give you an idea of how rich the full wall must have looked.

Here is something many visitors do not realise. For centuries, much of this theatre lay under sand. The desert slowly filled the space, and the building was partly hidden from view. Systematic excavation and restoration only came in the twentieth century, in the 1950s. Some of what you see today was reassembled by restorers. If you look closely, you can sometimes see the difference between original blocks and later repair work.

The theatre also sits in a careful position. It lies beside the Great Colonnade, the long avenue of columns that ran through the heart of the ancient city. The theatre did not stand alone in open ground. It was part of a planned urban centre, with streets curving around it and public buildings close by. Imagine the noise of the street, the shops and the crowds, just beyond the stage wall.

The most famous figure in Palmyra's story lived about a century after the theatre was built. Her name was Zenobia. In the third century she ruled the city and challenged Rome itself, extending Palmyra's power across a large part of the eastern empire. Her rebellion ended in defeat, and Roman forces took the city in the 270s. Palmyra never fully recovered its earlier wealth. The theatre outlived the queen, but the great age of the city was over.

In 1980, the ruins of Palmyra were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. For decades travellers came here to walk the colonnade and sit on these seats at sunset. Then came the Syrian civil war. In 2015 the extremist group known as ISIS captured the city. This theatre became the setting for some of their worst crimes. They carried out public executions here, on the same stage where audiences once watched plays.

The damage did not stop there. In early 2017, militants deliberately destroyed part of the stage wall in front of you. They also destroyed the Tetrapylon, a monument of four groups of columns that stood nearby. Look at the gaps in the facade. They are not only the work of time and earthquakes. Some are the marks of a modern attack on memory itself. Many people consider this the second surprise of the place: the newest ruins here are among the most painful.

The story also has quieter moments of resistance. In 2015, the archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, who had spent much of his life studying and protecting Palmyra, was killed by ISIS. He is remembered as a guardian of this site. And in 2016, during a brief period when the city was back in government hands, a Russian orchestra performed a concert on this stage. For one evening, music returned to the theatre.

Today the theatre is a place where several layers of history sit together. There is the Roman building, the Palmyrene city that used it, the sand that covered it, the restorers who uncovered it, and the recent war that damaged it. Conservation specialists continue to study what can be repaired. Every visit is part of that longer story, because attention and care help keep a place like this alive.

Before you leave, climb a few rows and sit for a moment. Look down at the stage, then lift your eyes over the wall toward the columns of the old street and the desert beyond. Notice how the curved seats gather sound. Speak quietly and listen to your voice return. People sat here nearly two thousand years ago and looked at the same horizon. As you walk out toward the colonnade, take that view with you.