Bosra Amphitheater

The amphitheater in Bosra was once considered to be one of the best preserved Roman theaters in the world. In the 12th century, it was converted into an Arab fortress. In modern times, musicians and orchestras from around the world valued its special acoustics. But fighting has has apparently turned the amphitheater into true ruins.

Bazaar Torched

UNESCO also recognized Aleppo's historic center as a World Heritage site because of the ancient souk, the largest covered market in the Middle East. The bazaar covers an area of about 350 hectares with several streets and hundreds of shops. But even the five-kilometer long wall surrounding the historic center was not able to protect the market: it burned down during fighting in 2012.
 

Krak des Chevaliers

The oasis city of Palmyra is also at risk. The Monumental Arch is still standing, but some archaeological excavations sites have been looted. Palmyra is one of Syria's architectural landmarks. The boulevard with its Corinthian columns, the arch from the time of Septimius Severus and the walls of the Temple of Baal have now been marked by bullet holes.

Aleppo Occupied

Over the course of the civil war, cultural sites have been misused as strategic bases - among them the Citadel of Aleppo, a fortress on a hill towering above the old city. The Seleucid Empire, a dynasty that followed Alexander the Great, erected the fortress in the 4th century B.C. Greeks, Romans, Persians, Byzantines and Ottomans have also built temples on the hill.
 

Aleppo threatened

In 2013, UNESCO listed six unique World Heritage sites in Syria as being in danger, including the historic center of Aleppo. Aleppo has a long history: as a cultural hub on the Mediterranean Sea, it is mentioned in documents dating back to the 19th century B.C. 

Without culture

Over four millennia, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Roman influences crossed paths in Syria. Today, precious cultural sites from these eras are being damaged as the Syrian civil war takes its toll on the country's cultural heritage. The United Nation's cultural organization UNESCO is concerned for the country's cultural heritage.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

So just imagine howling along the Grande Corniche above Nice, the open cockpit gently marinated in warm aromatic breezes of mimosa and pine, the emerald sea glinting below, the sound of the engine bouncing back off the cliffs as you overtake the sparse but slow everyday traffic, while propelled by a Le Mans winning V12, cornering on road-race suspension and, on arrival, almost out-dazzling the sun with the car’s achingly gorgeous Pininfarina bodywork. Spiders, or Spyders to use the earlier spelling, and Cabriolets and Barchettas, are among the most impossibly desirable cars Ferrari has made over its long history of making impossibly desirable cars. And that re-created journey demonstrate the two reasons why. First, because many of Ferrari’s competition cars have been open-cockpit, and the experience of driving an open car hard on the road is even more intense than when a metal roof is overhead; the feeling of speed, the sound of the engine, and the tangible link with Maranello’s racing cars. And, secondly, because an open car, in the times when it’s not being driven fast, has the potential to be simply a more glamorous conveyance than a closed car. It puts the occupants more intimately in touch with the surroundings they’ve chosen to travel through and it also puts the occupants on show, almost demanding of them that they dress up to match the glamour of the car. Gradually, as competition cars became more specialised and less capable of being used on the road, Ferrari’s open cars have more-or-less split into two different lineages. On the one hand, are the competition-related extreme-performance road cars and, on the other, those that emphasise beauty, luxury, and glamour – bearing in mind that “luxurious” for Ferrari still amounts to “pretty darned purposeful” by any other standards. It’s worth reminding ourselves of these two lineages because right now, in the new 458 and the California, there’s a representative of each kind in the Ferrari line-up. The competition-type open cars are, of course, where it all began, with Enzo Ferrari making his own cars from 1947. To Enzo the engine was really all that mattered, but others in the Company, including ironically the engine designer Gioachino Colombo, wanted a distinctive body design for Ferraris.