ARCHITECTURAL RECORD
ISIS Continues Destruction at Palmyra
by Ben Lynfield
October 2015

The magnificent archeological ruins of Palmyra, Syria—whose rediscovery by travelers in the 17th century contributed to the revival of Greco-Roman architecture in the West—are being systematically destroyed by Islamic State militants. The group has already obliterated some of the site’s most significant buildings. In detonating the treasures at the site northeast of Damascus, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is targeting the antithesis of its purist identity as the self-designated restorer of the caliphate: an ancient city that during the first to third centuries CE [predating Islam] was a multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual society whose architecture uniquely fused classical with Persian and Mesopotamian influences….ISIS, seeking to demonstrate its power and win recruits, has not only destroyed the architecture of this UNESCO World Heritage site, it murdered [publicly beheaded] its Syrian curator, 82-year-old Khaled al-Asaad, who had devoted his life to the study of Palmyra. READ MORE