West Asia

Baghlan, Afghanistan

Baghlan Afghanistan

North-western Syria has about seven hundred “Dead Cities” or “Forgotten Cities.” They include villages, towns, and some cities that were mainly abandoned between the 700s and 900s CE.

Because they rest in an elevated area of limestone known as the Limestone Massif,  which gets relatively little rain, the settlements are more or less still at surface level and well-preserved. There are three main groups of highlands on the Massif, each with their own Dead Cities. They provide us with insight into what life was like for prosperous agriculturalists in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period.

Theatre of Palmyra

Palmyra (Tadmor), Syria

2nd century CE

The second-century CE theatre was built in the center of a semicircular colonnaded piazza which opens up to the South Gate of Palmyra. 

The seating area is ninety-two meters in diameter, but only the lowest section of twelve rows survive. It is argued that additional rows of seating would have been constructed from wood, and were therefore not preserved. The seating faces north-northeast. The stage of the theater is particularly impressive, with a beautifully decorated façade. The stage measures forty-five and a half by ten and a half meters. It features three doorways in its façade, with one additional doorway on each end. The columns on the stage are decorated with Corinthian capitals. Emperor Nero is known to have placed his statue in the niche above the main entrance of the stage. 

The 82-by-104-metre piazza was located to the south-west of the main colonnaded street. The unfinished cavea is 92 metres in diameter and consists only of an ima cavea, the lowest section of the cavea, directly surrounding the orchestra. The ima cavea is organized into eleven cunei of twelve rows each[3] and faces north-northeast towards the cardo maximus. The theatre’s aditus maximi, its main entrances, are 3.5 metres in width, and lead to a stone-paved orchestra with a diameter of 23.5 metres. The orchestra is bounded by a circular wall with a diameter of 20.3 metres. 

The proscenium wall is decorated with ten curved and nine rectangular niches placed alternately. The stage measures 45.5 by 10.5 metres and is accessed by two staircases. The scaenae frons had five doors: the main entrance, or valve regia, built into a broad curved niche; two guest doors on either side of the valve regia, or valve hospitalis, built into shallow rectangular niches; and two extra doors, at either end of the stage.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

The theater was harmed by Islamic Terrorist organization ISIS after being used to execute soldiers in 2016.