Palmyra

Palmyra was the only oasis in Syria and perhaps the only truly tourist town.

Palmyra (the Roman name) was known as Tadmor to the Syrians. Both meant the same thing - date palm. The name came from the lush oasis adjacent to the city which was home to some million date palms.

Palmyra is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site; all six Syrian UNESCO-listed heritage sites are 'endangered' as of 2013.

Understand


Palmyra sat on the standard tourist trek around Syria. Intense competition for business amongst local outfits made the experience somewhat overwhelming to the traveller who had come from the North and had enjoyed a relatively 'quiet' trip thus far. The major tourist attraction of the area was the stunning ruins - the most famous and well-preserved of which were the Temple of Bel, the colonnade, the funerary towers, the hypogeum of 3 brothers, and the Arab castle. All were within a few kilometres of each other.

Much of this irreplaceable heritage was deliberately destroyed by ISIS during armed conflict in 2015. Although Syria's directorate of antiquities and museums makes hopeful statements about rebuilding at least part of the lost heritage using the original pieces, Palmyra is landmine-infested and no longer a tourist destination.

The Lion of Al-lāt was restored in 2017 and can now be found at the National Museum of Damascus.

Get in

 * Palmyra was easily accessible from Damascus by bus departing the Harasta bus terminal. Buses ran nearly hourly in both directions during the hours of daylight.  Buses also ran from Homs (150 km) and Deir-az-Zur.
 * For bike tourists, Palmyra was about a three-day trip from either Damascus or Deir-az-Zur. One needed to bring plenty of food as shops were few and far between; water was available at semi-regular intervals from police stations, military installations and at private houses on request.
 * As of April 2019, visitors need special permission to access Palmyra.

Get around

 * The best method was to walk. The town was not large and the historic site was built in a time when walking was the main form of transportation, so it was not too spread out. Bear in mind that the heat can be truly scorching; plan to visit at dusk and early morning to see magnificent sunrise and sunsets.
 * Camel rides were offered.
 * Tour buses abounded; locals did offer rides if you were willing to haggle.

See
Many of the historic sites have been destroyed or severely damaged. Mines were removed by Russian forces in 2016-17, but there is no guarantee that all mines have been cleared.



Buy
There were no ATMs (that accepted international cards - there was one for Syrian cards) in Palmyra or even a full-service bank. Hotel Bel (on the main street) offered advances on Visa and MasterCard for a 20% commission. There was a local exchange office by the museum which changed foreign currency but did not change traveller's cheques. You would have needed to bring sufficient cash, Syrian pounds, US dollars, or euros for your time in Palmyra.

As usual, the Syrian Commercial Bank offered terrible rates and added commission. You'd have gotten a better deal by checking the rates online then changing with the shop owners in the Souq.

Souvenir shops abounded on the main street with all kinds of jewellery, handicrafts and other wares typical to the Bedouin places. Shopkeepers (in a town with few sources of income other than tourism) were masters in the art of making you part with as much money as possible, so it would have been wise to only carry as much money with you as you were willing to spend on souvenirs (and food - see below) to avoid being talked into spending all or most of the money you had for the rest of your trip in Syria. Typically souvenir shopping would happen around dinner, as many of the restaurants and shops were in the same main street and you would have happened to walk past them on your way to or from the hotels and restaurants.

Eat

 * Traditional Palymra Restaurant -- very bad reputation, with several differently priced but identical menus, tendency to recycle uneaten food, etc.
 * New Palmyra Restaurant / Pancake House on the main street for most tourists, al-Quwatli. This was a traditional Palmyra restaurant - catering for the tourist hordes. The owner was well connected with an army of scouts corralling tourists into the restaurant. For the adventurous traveller, fake ISIC student cards were available for purchase for €7.50, although they are of poor quality and little use in the Middle East.

On the same street, several stands sold roast chicken.

On any of the main roads running north you would have found find falafel stands and small restaurants selling the typical range of Syrian fast food, bakeries selling sweet treats and plenty of convenience stores with drinks and snacks.

Drink
The only bars in Palmyra were inside the hotels, such as the Cave Bar in the basement of the Ishtar Hotel. The bar carried a good selection of local beers and wines and you could drink on the terrace of the hotel.

Sleep
Due to the conflict it is unknown which, if any, of these hotels are in business.

Connect
In the main tourist area, the Hani Internet Café inside the Traditional Palmyra Restaurant charged a pricey S£50 for a half hour. This may have been negotiable in low season. An Internet café slightly north of the centre charged S£20 an hour but had irregular hours.

Go next
Buses departed frequently for Damascus, Homs, and Deir-az-Zur.The bus station was a little under a kilometre away from the main street. Other destinations may have needed a private car.

If hiring a private car, you might have wanted to consider side trips to Qasr al-Heir ash-Sharki - a partially excavated Ummayad palace quite literally in the middle of nowhere - and Rasafa, originally a Roman city with heavy Byzantine influence, also used by the Ummayads before being destroyed in the Abbasid era. Rasafa was also of interest as the stone it's built out of, more a quartz-like crystal instead of the usual granite or sandstone, made for a unique appearance. This route led quite close to the Euphrates, where you could have been dropped off in Raqqa, Aleppo, or Hama. Car hire was often pricey and the driver still had to get back to Palmyra. Private tours were the real money maker in the Syrian tourism industry, so expect to pay as much as US$100 if you were heading for Aleppo or Hama or a bit less to Raqqa.