National Geographic staffer Korena Di Roma is just back from a two-week trip to Syria, where she explored some undisturbed ruins outside Apamea.

Among the surprises I encountered on a recent trip to Syria, the colonnaded avenue at Apamea (Afamia in Arabic), was perhaps the most impressive. Having come by car from Palmyra--probably the most celebrated archaeological site in a country strewn with the remnants of raiders and empires--I thought I had seen the best of imperial Rome's architectural statements. But after miles of fertile cotton and barley fields, the ruins of the Hellenistic city of Apamea rose into view with their own, unexpected majesty, the last vestiges of a Seleucid crossroads once inhabited by half a million people.

Located in northwestern Syria on the right bank of the Orontes River, it's easily accessible by car from either Hama or Aleppo, Syria's second largest city and itself worth a visit, particularly because it is an easy and inexpensive train ride from Damascus, costing about four dollars for clean, first-class accommodations.

When we drove up to Apamea in late afternoon, a lone attendant at a small ticket booth collected our entrance fee of 150 Syrian pounds (about three dollars) per person. The only other visitors were a group of schoolchildren clustered around the base of a votive column, a family picnicking on a patch of grass, and a few couples who might have been seeking privacy. As it was, they chose well. Apamea had no tour buses, peddlers, or four-legged "taxis." Instead it seemed a quiet refuge, an isolated outcropping where wildflowers marched on the agora as relentlessly as the Crusaders once did.
With no posts or placards to guide our tour, we strolled south along the avenue with an inadequate travel book subsection giving the only explanation of who and what had preceded us. A few young men attempted to sell us replicated antique coins, but their efforts were mostly halfhearted, and they seemed to prefer lounging between the columns to watch us take photographs and scrape our skin on thistle leaves. Beyond the western warrior line of columns, the sun had begun to set over the Ghab Valley, throwing into blue relief the medieval hilltop village that had once been the site of a Seleucid acropolis. On a closer hill, a shepherd grazed a flock of sheep and more young men on motorbikes paused on the summit before whirring down rocky paths toward a vague destination.

Likely of superlative proportions in the ancient world, Apamea was all but destroyed by an earthquake in the second century and reconstructed by the Romans, who had seized the city under Pompey in 64 B.C. Much of what can be seen today was built during this period of reconstruction. The avenue--more than a mile long--runs in a straight north-south line, and standing between the beautiful, spiral-fluted columns at the south end, you can look toward the north and imagine a once flourishing city, the broad thoroughfare (called Cardo Maximus by the Romans) flanked by its religious and civic buildings.

About two-thirds of the way to the far south end, the avenue is bisected by a modern road, and at this intersection, a pair of middle-aged men offered us seats in the shade of their souvenir stand. They served us sweetened chai tea from glasses washed out at a nearby spigot and continued, as though never interrupted, to discuss the travails of their unmarried children. They accepted no money for the tea, but were happy to sell us magnets reading "I Heart Syria" or emblazoned with the image of President Bashar Al-Assad. Across the intersection, a local family had propped clean cooking pots and boxes of apricots on some of the ancient column fragments in their dusty courtyard. By this time, we were the only remaining visitors among the ruins. It was entirely possible that the site had closed for the day, but no one bothered to tell us to leave.

Photos: Korena Di Roma