Suganeh

The C4th church of Suganeh is located in the centre of the village and, on a visit in 1998, was surrounded by modern dwellings and at risk of being destroyed. At that time it was being used as a village rubbish dump and the stone was being taken for modern building projects. Only the apse, bema and a group of sarcophagi south of the apse were still extant at the time of the visit.

Type: Architecture
Tags: Architecture, Bema, C4th, Church, Jebel Seman, Limestone Massif, Suganeh, Syria

Defensive walls, Towers and town, Halabiyeh/Zenobia

Type: Architecture
Tags: Anastasius, C5th-C6th, Church, Defensive Network, Justinian, Military Architecture, Procopius, Roman, Syria

St. Nicholas/Gemiler Island

Gemiler Island is dotted with several late antique church's from the 4th-6th century AD and is believed to have been the original burial site of St Nicholas, the 4th century AD Bishop of Myra. A covered processional walkway leads to the uppermost and largest church on the island which is cut into the summit of the hill. Fresco's and writing are still visible on portions of one of the lower churches. By the sea, facing the mainland and partially submerged, lie the remains of relatively small structures cut into the rock, likely houses and or shops. Large cisterns are also to be found, presumably to provide fresh water to the permanent monastic population that would have occupied the island and to thirsty pilgrims to the site.

Type: Architecture
Tags: Byzantine, C4th-C5th, C5th-C6th, Church, St. Nicholas

Palmyra Temple of Bel

The Temple of Bel as it appears today dates from the C1st-C2nd AD, but stands on a much older cult site near the date palm grove and Eqfa spring that enabled the foundation of a city in the middle of the Syrian desert. Later on the cella of the temple was adapted for use as a Christian church and faint traces of frescoes are still visible on the interior walls. It was also fortified in the middle ages and there was a village within the walls of the compound until the population was removed by the French authorities during their rule of Syria in the 1920s.

Type: Architecture
Tags: Archaeology, Architecture, Bel, C1st-C2nd, Church, Fresco, Islam, Medieval, Palmyra, Roman, Sculpture, Syria, Tadmor, Temple

South Basilica, Side

Situated towards the southernmost point of the peninsular that Side occupies this Basilica was built in the 5th century AD usurping and partly building over the sites of the older Temples Apollo and Athena. The large basilica was destroyed in the 7th century and a smaller church was built within.

Type: Architecture
Tags: Basilica, Byzantine, Church, Late Antique, Roman, Turkey

Martyrium of St Phillip, Hierapolis

This church on the hills above and north of the city proper of Hierapolis is believed to be the martyrium where the remains of St Phillip were interred.

Type: Architecture
Tags: Church, Late Antique, Martyrium, Turkey

Temple of Aphrodite/Christian Basilica, Aphrodisias

Begun in the 1st century the construction of the Temple of Aphrodite was paid for by Aphrodisias’ most famous and wealthy citizen, Zoilos. In the 2nd century AD the temple had a colonnaded courtyard enclosure built around it. Around 500 AD the temple was converted into a Basilica church and was extensively rebuilt and remodelled into a building much larger than the original temple.

Type: Architecture
Tags: Basilica, Church, Greek, Late Antique, Roman, Temple, Turkey

New Church at Dayr Mar Elian

Images of the new church built at Dayr Mar Elian once it was established that the church built in 1938 was unstable and needed to be demolished. A traditionally-built small chapel was built over the sarcophagus and this larger, more modern church was built to the west of the cloister.

Type: Architecture
Tags: Archaeological Excavation, Church, Dayr Mar Elian, Icon, Mar Elian, Mar Elian esh-Sharqi, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Syria, Syrian Civil War

Dayr Mar Elian

These images show the cloister of Dayr Mar Elian esh-Sharqi after the Syrian team from the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) finished their work at the site. A strategy for preserving the site has been indefinitely delayed by the start of the Syrian civil war.

Type: Archaeological Excavation
Tags: Archaeological Excavation, Church, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Mar Elian, Mar Elian esh-Sharqi, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Syria, Syrian Civil War

The Church of the Entrance of the Theotokos in the Temple, Hama

This church dates back to the C5th, but has been damaged and rebuilt many times over its history. Before the current civil war, it was last rebuilt in the 1990s having sustained damage in the 1982 offensive by the Syrian government against the Muslim Brotherhood in the city. Elements of the earliest structure do survive and it is particularly interesting for being a transverse-nave church, a type more usually found in the Tur Abdin region of Turkey.
Although Hama, then known as Epiphania, was an important Christian centre in late antiquity, more recently it had one of the smallest Christian communities in a major city. For that reason this entry is linked to nearby Homs, rather than treating Hama as a separate collection of data.

Type: Architecture
Tags: Architecture, C20th, C5th, Church, Hama, Syria, The Entrance of the Theotokos in the Temple, Transverse nave, Tur Abdin, Turkey