Funerary Temple at Palmyra, Syria - stock photo

From a slightly elevated position looking across a vast rubble strewn desert towards the 2nd century Funerary Temple at the end of the Great Colonnade. In fact the Funerary Temple is not a temple at all it is simply a tomb built in the style of a prostyle (ie columns along the front only) temple, with a crypt below. Nothing is known about whom it was built for, though given its scale and its position at the end of the Cardo Maximus, it must have been somebody important.Palmyra is an oasis in the Syrian Desert, north-east of Damascus. Palmyra contains the monumental ruins of a great city that was one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world. From the 1st to the 2nd century, the art and architecture of Palmyra, standing at the crossroads of several civilisations, married Greco-Roman techniques with local traditions and Persian influences. The ruined city was discovered by European travellers in the 17th and 18th centuries, contributing greatly to the subsequent revival of classical architectural styles and urban design in the West.