These Rare Pictures Capture The Former Beauty Of ISIS’s Latest Target

BuzzFeed - Latest 2015-08-27

Summary:

The Syrian town of Palmyra, which means "the city of palms," is home to the monumental ruins of an ancient oasis city that predates the first century A.D. Some findings at Palmyra have provided evidence of settlements dating as far back as 7,500 B.C.

Once a stop in the Syrian desert for travelers, Palmyra became a bustling city under the Roman empire, and its enormous wealth allowed the construction of significant monuments and architectural structures. Palmyrene art, its temples, cemeteries, and statues are so treasured that the city was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1980.

The following images were taken by Félix Bonfils, a French photographer who traveled through the Middle East after moving to Beirut in 1867. The book of images, Photographs of Palmyra, circa 1867–1876, is part of the Myron Bement Smith collection at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Palmyra's grande colonnade is a series of Greco-Roman columns that stretch a little over half a mile and was built in stages during the second and third centuries.

Freer Gallery of Art | Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Library, Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Earlier this year, the city — which had been passed from one empire to another over the last 2,000 years — was captured by ISIS and remains under its control. Since then, the militant group has been bombing parts of the ruins using explosives and threatening to destroy what they describe as idolatrous statues as part of their efforts to destroy all evidence of pre-Islamic civilization in Syria. Meanwhile, smugglers hope to benefit from the crisis by extracting and selling its most valuable objects.