But, it's better to take two days for wandering through the amphitheater, temples, public market and caravan stopping post, museum and residential homes. The ruins are said to be magnificent at dawn and dusk. Palmyra still possesses huge walls and spectacular colonnades that stand out with a ghost-like presence in the dusty, hilly desert. Palmyra is a Roman name, meaning city of palms. In Arabic, it is Tadmor, meaning city of dates.
Date palms abound.
Intricate relief statues illustrate the city's people and gods. Near the Temple of Bel, the Babylonian god of the sky, one stone panel shows women covered in swirls of cloth, a sign that veiling took place even before Muslim times. Other panels show soldiers in their armor and with their camels. Started in 32 A.D., the temple took 200 years to build. That's longer than modern construction jobs but, then, most of the structure has lasted nearly 2,000 years.