They took it all and I don't care already said my farewell.

Sweet Palmyra and that old ninth ward have to hit that long road that passes straight through hell.

I wish you well well sweet Palmyra. Jolie Holland 2008. Hello and

welcome to the Wonders of the World.

The podcast of visits the Great Places on Earth

to tell the story of our people, our civilization, and our planet.

This week, episode 40, what was supposed to be the seventh wonder of the Hellenistic era,

the temple of Bell, and Palmyra, Syria.

The lyrics had opened this episode from a song about New Orleans, Louisiana, a city which was

ravaged by a hurricane in 2005 and there's a resonance between the

great human and cultural losses that hit that city and the one that hit

Palmyra Syria just three short years ago.

And this is an episode that I wasn't really going to do.

In 2015, terrorists from ISIS or Daesh or ISIL or whatever you want to call them,

occupied and destroyed the great ruins of Palmyra.

And according to UNESCO, virtually nothing remains.

Safe travel to Syria in general and the desert around the ruins will be impossible for the foreseeable

future.

You're not going here and there's no here to go to. Not anymore.

And there have been rumblings about restoring the site and rebuilding the temples,

but the damage was so significant and the outlook so grim that for only the second time I removed

this site from my personal list of 200 wonders to be replaced by the site I'll

...