Apamea

Apamea on the Orontes is one of the ancient Near East's most expansive Hellenistic-Roman cities, founded around 300 BC by the Seleucid king Seleucus I Nicator and named after his wife Apame. Once a metropolis of more than 500,000 inhabitants, it served as the capital of the Apamene region and later the Roman province of Syria Secunda. Its most striking feature is a colonnaded cardo maximus stretching nearly two kilometers — among the longest and best-preserved monumental streets of the Roman world. Exceptional floor mosaics, largely now housed in the National Museum of Damascus, attest to the city's late-antique wealth. Since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, large-scale looting has left the site severely damaged, with crater fields visible in satellite imagery and drawing urgent international attention from archaeologists.