Syria

[Heresson]

here's a nice abyss (? absyda in polish) of one of the churches

[Datajack Franit]

Great pics. I am warming up the tank engines.

LOL

[Heresson]

a tower - a view from another one

[Heresson]

that's the central church

[CrONoS]

Originally posted by Heresson
I had to shelter in the gate. A very nice ticket guy helped us out of there later on.

[Heresson]

a great St Sergius' basilica

[Heresson]

lovely inside

[Heresson]

there are a couple of more pics of Sergiopolis I wanted to show, including nice round stairs (I love round stairs, I don't know why), great water reservouars and other stuff, but I have to move on to sth else. Here is Dura.
Dura dates at least to hellenistic times, and it was an important Roman-Byzantine stronghold on Persian boarded. While not much remained of the temples, churches, synagogues, houses and palaces that were once there, it is DEFINITELY worth a visit. The city is huge, and it has impressing city walls, gate and large citadel. Along the boarders of the city stretches somekind of nice small valley leading to the Euphrates which neighbours the ruins from the other side. There are a lot of ruins, unfortunatelly mostly just fundaments, to see there. I will remember the city as completely covered with hairy orange caterpillars. I should post a picture of them. It was incredible.
I believe it was in Dura that unique synagogue drawings, depicting humans, were found.

[Heresson]

that was the gate. And here is sth inside the walls. I like the gentle colours.

[Heresson]

Here's a view at the Euphrates (Al-Furat) river. There are other places to see, but I have to move on

[Heresson]

I believe Al-Ga'bar castle was built by Nuri ad-Din, but I must check it. Anyway, it is located north from Raqqa, and today it is surrounded by waters of Asad's lake on Euphrates.

[Heresson]

It should be one of the towers and the lake

[BlackCat]

those dust storm pics looks kind of artificial.

Your ruins pics - well, I wish I could have seen those places before they became ruins

[Heresson]

And here's the Asad's lake alone

[Heresson]

Ar-Rahba castle can be easily seen from the road from Dayr az-Zawr to the Iraqi boarder. There are servises You can use, I believe, but we were in a rented servis (it's called talab in arabic, if You don't want to rent a servis on your own, ask for servis 'adi - when they see You're a foreigner, they're most likely to try to deceive You and f.e. tell You there are no buses and no servises so that You'd have to take a taxi or a talab. Unfortunatelly, often, especially if You don't know arabic, You have no means of checking if they're saying thruth or not.)
To save his time, the driver took us around the castle on the hill and told us there's no entrance. I am stubborn however, and climbed the slope. Only being already far up I've noticed how dangerous it was. I've chosen what seemed to be easy track - part of the slope going gentlier down. But it was created by part of the castle walls collapsing, and it was not stable. There was nothing to put your legs, and especially hands, on. And more up there were, but they might as well go down with me.
When I was already in the castle, this nice guy in the picture showed me where the entrance was. I'd have found it anyway, probably.