Original subtitles

NEWSREADER: Fighters from the so-called Islamic State

are reported to be closing in on the ancient city of Palmyra,

one of the Middle East's greatest archaeological sites.

In May 2015, to the horror of the watching world,

so-called Islamic State seized the ancient ruined city of Palmyra

in Syria.

They began destroying it, in an act of barbaric cultural terrorism.

Allahu Akbar!

With propaganda videos like these,

heritage became a victim in a war of ideology fought in the media.

When IS was finally driven out in March 2017,

I knew I had to return to Palmyra.

As an architectural historian,

I've long been mesmerised by the city's intoxicating, classical

architecture. And I feel a deep emotional connection to these ruins.

Fortunately, my friend, the veteran photographer Don McCullin,

also has a love and fascination for Palmyra.

Don, best known for his gritty black-and-white war photographs,

has experienced almost every conflict during the last 60 years.

Don has taken some wonderful photographs of Palmyra

and wants to go back to take more.

We both felt compelled to find out first-hand what damage IS have

inflicted and if the toppled structures

could be put back together. And why that matters.

But to get to Palmyra,

we have to travel through a country still in the grip of war.

After two days of travelling, Don and I reach the Syrian capital.

I'm elated.

I've been here in my mind a lot recently, planning, plotting.

I don't want to spoil your joy,

but there is a suburb here where there are rebels still holding out,

people are starving. Because it all seems to be very civilised

and functioning. But at any moment death could arrive

in the opposite direction.

The security is tight.

Even to enter our hotel.

A lot of noise out there, it's bombs, I imagine aeroplanes.

Maybe artillery.

Dropping bombs and shells on eastern Ghouta, which is a rebel-held area.

I say rebels - the opposition to Assad.

They are still holding out.

People are dying only about four or five kilometres from here.

This is still a city at war.

Our first morning in Damascus.

Before we can start filming on the streets,

we are ordered to meet the general in charge of all press activities

in the heavily fortified government headquarters.

And we are told to stop filming.

But, surprisingly, Don is allowed to take photographs.

In a tense exchange,

the general blames Western countries who are permitting their citizens

to join IS, and says Western media should report that the Syrian army

is ridding the world of terrorists.

Fortunately, he approves our cultural expedition.

The General clearly wants our film to show that the regime

is the saviour of Syria's heritage.

Back on the streets,

endless images of President Assad and his late father

looked down at us.

We are still subject to roadblocks and security checks.

Don and I aware that we are only here because the regime

has approved our entry.

With permission to film granted,

our first stop is a national museum closed to the public for seven years

Here is the lion. The Lion of Al-lat.

The first thing we see is the recently restored Lion of Al-lat

from Palmyra, which was smashed by IS.

It looks so beautiful, doesn't it, with the minarets in the background.

Here are some of the old stones that Islamic State

didn't bother to smash.

Here's some parts of the old stones that were smashed, and have been

restored with resin.

Here's another, again, an old stone with some interesting graffiti.

So it's clear what is old and what's new.

Authenticity not confusing.

Photography gave me a life, it gave me an education -

because I travel with many people like Dan, and they became my tutors.

Now I'm getting rather desperate to get in there,

to see these treasures.

In May 2015, as IS - or Daesh in Arabic -

closed in on Palmyra for the first time,

trucks loaded with artefacts from its museum were driven to Damascus.

We've come a long way and I'm desperately keen

to see what you have from Palmyra. I'm particularly desperately keen

to see the things you salvaged in terrible circumstances,

at the 11th hour, as Daesh was arriving.

Can we see those first?

We will show you together with my colleagues.

Thank you so much.

We are taken into the inner sanctum of the museum.

Wow.

So this is one of the objects you've brought from Palmyra Museum?

Yeah. Well, she's a beautiful and she is more precious

and certainly more rare now, but for the moment

you keep her and her companions in secrecy and in security

because times are difficult.

But one day - one day - she will go back to Palmyra?

Yes, yes. We are optimistic to do this one day.

It makes sense that the saved artefacts -

we are told 850 of them -

are kept in a secret location so they are not exposed to attack.

But what this suggests, of course,

is that the situation in the country is far from stable.

We're now going to see the pieces that were recovered after IS

had been driven out of Palmyra for the first time.

They destroyed first all the heads, all the faces.

You see? All the heads.

Systematic removal of the personalities.

Heads. So you now have to find the rest of that.

Islam protected and venerated these sites for 1,400 years.

Exactly. They don't care about Islam, or about everything, just

to destroy the cultures.

This is a sobering sight.

Once so well protected and well loved,

these images of the dead of Palmyra are now painfully disfigured.

Just profoundly depressing, isn't it?

It is. I find it hard to look at, really.

What is fantastically interesting about all this art -

and fascinating about Palmyra, generally - is the way it is

a fusion of the classical world and Greek and Roman costumes

married into the world of Syria.

Each 1,800-year-old face is a likeness of a once-living Palmyrian.

And for me, their destruction is an attack on a real person.

Oh!

Mother and the children.

The bitter irony is that the very things we love most become targets

for IS.

Our expression of horror at every cultural outrage

has simply provoked more outrageous attacks by IS.

In the afternoon, we go to Al-Hamidiyah Souq

which, despite the circumstances, is teeming with life.

We're going through.

Don wants to capture the people of the city.

Oh, my God, here's a picture for me.

What a beautiful man.

Fantastic.

You know, Syria has had a lot of, you know, negative press.

People don't know exactly how nice the Syrian people are, really.

You have to come here to find out.

What's for sale here says much about this nation, and its culture.

And Palmyra's ruins are entwined with Syria's identity -

they represent the people's national pride.

Temple of Bel, Temple of Baalshamin.

They stick on the fridge.

I like that, I like that.

I'd like a couple of those.

What's the best price you can do on this?

What's your best price?

1,500. 1,500.

I'll do it. Good man.

Thank you very much.

So what do you feel about the destruction

of the monuments in Palmyra?

Palmyra is even represented on the Syrian £200 note.

Look, it's amazing.

On the notes, the currency of the realm,

that's a wonderful detail from one of these shrines

in the Temple of Bel.

The sensational ceiling. Lovely. Thank you.

With night closing in,

it's strange to realise that we are only a few kilometres

from deadly warfare. I'm getting a bit anxious.

It's getting dark, stuff gets dangerous.

Because this, of course, is where the mortar fell.

Well, if one goes off there's every chance one might come back in reply.

So maybe we should push on.

Day three. Today we travelled to the city of Homs.

But we've all had a disturbed night's sleep.

Three o'clock in the morning, I was awoken by a huge explosion.

I mean, I can handle the situation

because I've been doing this for 60 years.

I've always liked the challenge but my body is beginning to say,

this could be the last real adventure in your life.

But I'm not going to go down without a fight.

That's why I came here.

I feel like a battery hen.

I want to get out of here and flap my wings.

I want to get going.

We're due to drive to Palmyra via the city of Homs

because it's the only route open. Our local producer, Lana,

tells us an eruption of military activity means

we have to take a detour.

The road is closed because it's dangerous

so we need to take the other to avoid this area,

near the east Ghouta.

Between the checkpoints along the way it's as if the Assad dynasty

is watching our progress.

I've just taken a photograph of some of the world's most appalling

people. You've never seen a more untrustworthy bunch

of people in your life.

Finally, we arrive at our destination.

A city that has seen some of the most intense fighting

of the war - Homs.

But initially it seems unscathed.

No serious sign of war damage here.

It looks as if life has always been normal here.

This is where the popular uprising against the Assad regime

started in May 2011.

I'm surprised. I'm just waiting for the change.

I didn't expect that. Look at that.

That side of the road is OK but this side - bullet marks, pock marks,

shell damage. So we are literally on the strange boundary of conflict,

as it were.

We arrived at our hotel, which the UN also uses for its headquarters.

The security here is intense.

We've been searched twice, gone through two sets of fortifications.

We're now in the compound outside a hotel.

Nothing but UN vehicles.

I think we're in the most fortified part of the city.

Don and I head to the old city,

where Assad's opponents were besieged for three years.

The battle for Homs ended in May 2014 when Assad lifted the siege

of the city's centre, allowing opposition forces to evacuate.

But some parts held out until late 2015.

Amongst this devastation, Don searches for images

of this city's pain.

I'm in the old city, and it's virtually totally destroyed here.

This place has been completely hit by air strikes.

That's why all these huge concrete roofs have caved in.

And once again, the silence is quite creepy.

18. Yes, yes.

The silence is almost drumming on my ears.

I'm just going to wait for this motorbike to come up.

Perfect.

There is a bomb under here where I'm standing.

See, that's the top of the mortar bomb.

It hit the ground and it hasn't exploded.

It's buried itself in.

OK.

It's good. Yeah, good.

No problem. Yeah, good.

Tricky, but good. Yeah, I can do it.

I can do it.

No, no, no.

It's OK. Don't worry, don't worry.

Leave me, it's OK. Leave me.

Just take your time.

Let's not forget, this was somebody's home once.

And I'm trespassing on somebody's home

and their past lives living here.

There are their possessions scattered all over the place.

Quite frankly, I feel quite embarrassed about being here.

I can't do it from down here properly.

I need to climb on top of here.

He's going to lift you up. OK.

So can I give you that.

OK, it's too good up there not to do it.

I have to get up by the satellite dish because I can see the mosque

standing in all its glory amongst all this devastation

as far as the eye can see.

So it would be silly to come all this way and climb up these

horrible stairs and not get up on the top of here.

My hands on this wall? OK.

I've got to do this. Have you got my leg? It's OK,

don't worry about your leg.

I seem to have forgotten that I'm slightly older

than... My mind thinks first, and my body complains after.

I'm an old man's body with a young man's eyes.

I'm embarrassed about the concern that all the people

I've been working with have had for me.

I've lost my dignity a bit, really.

It's a terrible thing, old age.

Thank you.

Anyone who thinks I'm tough, you know,

they don't know how hard it's been for me to put on this charade

of toughness. But, you know, making out one's tough

will carry you that extra mile but deep down I'm just like

the average man in the street, really.

Particularly the average 83-year-old man in the street.

Look at this. This is a great shot.

A fantastic sky coming up here.

Look at that sky. It's wonderful.

And the mosque is amazing.

You got me?

Thank you.

You know, if I would have been here ten years ago

this would have been a thriving community.

And it's completely deserted.

You don't even see a dog or a cat running around here.

There is absolutely nothing apart from the occasional scooter

coming back from the market on the other side of town.

OK. Two seconds.

I'm going to go round, is that all right?

Got me? OK.

This could stand as a ghost city for many years to come.

Who's going to come back here?

Who's going to finance the rebuilding of the old city of Homs?

It will never again be the old city of Homs.

There's a poster of President Assad that's there to reinforce

his popularity amongst the people of this country.

But it's almost ridiculous to think that this poster is in front

of the damage that he, personally, inflicted upon his own people.

Day Four. We're on our way to Crusaders' Castle,

just outside Homs.

Krak des Chevaliers, built by the Knights Hospitaller

in the late 12th century, is one of the finest examples

of castle design in the world.

During the battle for Homs, the castle was occupied

by jihadist forces.

I've read that the regime had bombarded the castle

to force out the occupiers

who were deliberately using this precious building

as a shield.

There's the damage. There's the damage.

Oh, it's worse than I thought.

But of course, like all ancient buildings, it's vulnerable.

And never designed to resist aerial bombs or shelling or mortars.

Sorry this is...

Sorry, it's just a moment.

This is the hall of the Knights Hospitaller.

It is the most sensational building of about 1180.

This is the upper part of a castle, the inner sanctum.

This is the holy of holies.

This is the hall where the high grandees of the Knights Hospitaller,

comparable to the Knights Templars,

would have gathered to run this great domain -

part of the Christian adventure, the Christian kingdom in the Holy Land.

And now... Last time I was here it was almost perfect,

and now look at it. Look at it.

The columns in two of the windows of the hall's Cloister have been blown

out and the wall badly scarred with shrapnel.

The engineer overseeing repairs gives the government's version

of how the castle was damaged.

Who inflicted this damage on the Great Hall?

The columns blasted out and the shrapnel and so on.

How did that come about?

He tells me the damage inside was caused by the Jihadists

detonating bombs when they left the castle.

That is what the regime is now saying - Assad's regime.

The damage is here but is not caused by them,

but caused by the rebels who were occupying.

Stories here are difficult to unravel

and there are riddles within riddles.

Everybody I know who talks about this place are under the impression

that it was the Assad forces that did this damage.

Getting the truth is a very difficult task.

TE Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, when he was here,

early 20th century, said this was the best preserved

and the most wholly admirable castle in the world.

He's absolutely right.

It's the most perfect machine of medieval warfare.

And now look at it. The art of history and beauty

being victims of political struggle, political power games.

As we leave, an abandoned apartment block gives Don

the perfect vantage point of the castle.

This has never been an easy place to photograph, but it will be today.

I love the whole journey...

..finding the landscape, the subject, loading my camera,

taking the picture, going into my darkroom.

I'm terrified the night before I go in my darkroom

because I'm afraid of disappointment.

But sometimes things don't always turn out the way you expect them to.

But the whole thing is so exciting, really.

I've been doing this for 60-odd years, you know.

And I never get bored with it.

Back in Homs, in the district of Baba Amr,

there is a school now occupied by displaced people of Palmyra -

or Tadmur, as locals call it.

Your friends, Don. I'm surrounded by lovely children.

Yeah, lovely children.

We're here to meet a woman who fled Palmyra with her five children

after her husband, a government official, was murdered by IS.

When, and why, did you leave Tadmur to come to Homs?

What happened to your husband?

These are your children?

What was life like for you in Tadmur, Palmyra,

before the arrival of Daesh?

Our time in Homs has made us realise this journey

is more than a story about the ancient city of Palmyra.

The damage inflicted on the modern cities of Syria

is shattering to behold.

This is the last leg of our expedition.

Until March 2017, less than a year ago, this desert was occupied by IS.

And we are now in the hands of the Syrian military.

We picked up a car just outside Homs.

The car has two soldiers, two officers.

One with three stars on his shoulder, presumably high ranking.

They are our escort.

In a few hours, it will be dark.

And we need to reach Palmyra before nightfall.

You do not want to be on this road in another couple of hours

because nobody can guarantee that the kind of bandits

are not out there somewhere.

We're nearly there.

We're now being looked over by the Russian Army.

Well, our guns are bigger than theirs.

This is where Islamic State made one of their stands

before being ejected.

So there's munition boxes and a heavy - 20-calibre machinegun.

And a wild dog.

Our vehicles are stopped on the hill above Palmyra.

There is a sense of unease.

Our government minder makes sure they know

we have official approval to film.

Don and I get a chance to look at the ancient ruins

before night falls.

We're seeing the Temple of Bel - what remains of it.

We can see, just in the setting sun, just about make out the columns.

I can barely speak.

Epic journey, epic journey.

The modern town of Tadmur is deserted.

We'll be sleeping rough.

I can't bear to go somewhere with without, you know, putting my head -

when I sleep at night I need a soft pillow.

It may seem absurd, but I can't...

I can take any form of criticism you throw at me.

I'm going to use this pillow.

We're staying in a building previously occupied by IS.

Now it's a makeshift barracks for the Syrian army.

This is where the soldiers normally stay.

We're all in here together? That's very reassuring.

We have television.

That's great, burn the house down!

That often happens when I'm...

Is there no peace for the wicked?

There's nowhere else in the world I'd rather be right now than here.

Because one's seeing, exploring and, I hope,

in some way, we might help by our efforts.

I do not know. I'd rather be here than thinking about being here.

I could easily be in Somerset in a lovely bed with clean sheets

and things like that, but I'd be lacking something

because my mind demands that I come here.

I feel incredibly privileged to be here.

Do you know something? I'm going to go to sleep because I'm tired.

Me too. Here's my sleeping bag, here's my sleeping place,

and I'm going to sleep, too. I'm going to sleep in my clothes again.

I still don't quite trust everybody around here.

With my beanie hat on.

I'd normally lock the door if I thought people like you

were going to try and get in here.

Good night.

Night.

I just came up on this roof in this abandoned house where we've taken

refuge last night.

And as I came up the stairs,

I looked in the room and I saw a bunch of woman's shoes.

And I really felt sad, really,

because the town has been abandoned by its inhabitants

and many had no time to gather their possessions,

so looking at other people's lives via what they left behind

and uncomfortable being here.

Islamic State first occupied this town in May 2015.

After a vicious battle, it was taken back ten months later.

Tragically, Palmyra fell again to IS in December 2016,

before finally being retaken in March 2017 by the Syrian government

with its Russian allies.

We're on our way to the 2000-year-old Temple of Bel -

the most famous building of ancient Palmyra -

only minutes beyond the southern edge of the modern town.

I want to examine the remains of the Temple, and Don wants to document

the extent of the destruction.

It's important to me because I was probably

one of the last photographers to photograph it in its majestic way.

All in one piece together, it was truly magnificent.

Can you translate this, what it says?

Islamic State. So that's written by Daesh?

This is telling the local people not to go in.

Yes, yes.

This is the moment I've been dreading.

I'm finally going to see for myself what has happened

to the Temple of Bel.

It's a scene of horror.

When IS shattered the Temple of Bel with explosives,

they knew they would send a terrifying message

to the whole world.

Donald, what devastation.

I know.

It's chaos, isn't it?

This is raw and shocking cultural terrorism.

So important, so beautiful.

It is so utterly distressing.

A temple built for the worship of the god Bel,

destroyed by IS in a hideous act of propaganda.

They claimed it promoted idolatry.

Also they wanted to destroy beauty, memory,

architecture and the identity of the Syrian people.

This is fascinating.

Here is an image of a god, I suppose, not destroyed.

Well, not entirely.

It is the Eagle of Jupiter.

The face of the eagle has been hacked off.

This was the largest temple complex in the world

when it was built in the first century AD.

It was epic, and massive, and hugely important.

So this is what is left.

The explosion reduced this sensational building

to this amount of rubble.

My goodness.

Everywhere I look, it's more heartbreak

because the stones are so damaged.

This is what I wanted to see.

Look at the nature of the destruction.

The ancient stone, some of them reduced to this.

People say there's maybe 30% or 40% of the old stone not destroyed.

It can be reused. Hard to feel that, standing here.

The nature of the damage to the stones,

as you can see, is horrendous.

Almost impossible to endure.

It does look beautiful, even though it's been destroyed,

but at the same time,

I'm talking from the point of view of a photographer,

so we're bound to say things that are not totally correct.

I rather like the archway, it's defiant.

It means you haven't crossed us, you haven't beaten us.

We are still here.

Oh, my God. This is the capital itself.

This vast stone...

..stood at the top of one of the sides.

This is, I say, a scene that no-one should see.

A scene that I thought I would never experience.

This is a scene I suppose people endured

during the Second World War,

but a building of such international importance of incredible beauty,

it's a...

Just look at the nature of the destruction.

Russian soldiers ahead of us on the building,

but we won't take any notice of them.

Hello.

Here, OK? OK.

Outside, bad?

He said there are mines and we must be careful

not to stray too much around.

You know, it's not OK when there's a huge explosion,

and my legs have gone.

Actually, I fell over here several years ago and broke one of my ribs.

I tripped over and broke my rib and collapsed my lung,

so I don't want to do it again

because there's no hospital here anymore.

The question is, can it be brought back to life -

this dead body - in a way that doesn't make it

into a ghastly Frankenstein? Can it live again in some way?

I'm thinking that we have seen the worst, I think...

I hope some of the other temples we will...

..kind of rise to a slightly higher level and begin to think

of solutions that are possible here. It seems impossible.

What can one do?

These fragments of great classical architecture, how do you remake it?

You can carve it. What meaning will that have?

Do you know what? I've never thought this before.

I thought I'd never say it.

In this case, for this temple, you maybe just leave it.

Nothing can speak more about human baseness.

This is a lesson that must never be forgotten.

You know what? That's what I think now.

Leave it. Leave it. Just don't touch a thing.

I want to get an overall picture of this, it would be sensational.

One picture. Here, just here. Take it.

Suddenly, we're joined by several Russian military helicopters.

They're the people who have liberated this place

for the second time.

I suppose... There it is again.

I wish it would go away now.

I particularly don't want them in my picture now.

These helicopters are a reminder that the war continues

not far from Palmyra, and people are dying.

Why do stones matter, when lives have been given?

People, buildings, blood or stone, my view,

and the view expressed by most of the Syrians I've met on the road to

Palmyra - all different sorts, academics and soldiers -

is that they are entwined.

Human life is precious and wonderful,

human life is given meaning, focus, and direction by the past,

by such buildings.

Such buildings as this give them national identity, national pride.

Life itself has no meaning without reference of such buildings.

This is a place of great pride.

And it is important to the world.

This is culture, this is civilization,

this is humanity. This is what we stand for, and stand by.

At the head of the Grand Colonnade was a monumental arch -

one of the most recognisable landmarks of Palmyra -

and is in pieces on the ground.

In terms of these great arches from the ancient world,

this is one of the best.

It commemorates and marks this triumphal route

for merchant caravans going through the city.

Think of utter beauty and fantastically detailed

and delicate - you get that from the surviving fragments,

but there's more and larger proportions of relatively big

and undamaged blocks than at the Temple of Bel.

This all looks more promising.

It ceases to be like waste stones from a quarry somewhere,

but this has become architecture.

Here, you see lots of elements.

This is the heart and soul of Palmyra.

This is emblematic of all those great aspects of the city.

To see it laid low like this is beyond any heartbreak.

Look, these are tumbled blocks.

It is possible to make a reconstruction that retains

some high level of authenticity.

It won't just be a pastiche, or be a lot of old material.

This is good.

This is good. Gut reaction is that this is doable.

This is doable.

1,750 years ago, Palmyra was sacked by Roman legionaries

following a failed rebellion against the Empire,

with much of the population put to the sword.

That such barbarity should, after all these centuries,

be repeated is deeply and bleakly depressing.

Could we walk up a bit? Would you mind?

No, Don, how are you? Oh, it just kind of gets carried away here,

doesn't it?

We walk along Colonnade Street to the Roman theatre.

This is the theatre. Place, again, the scene of execution.

I know, I know, I know.

25 men killed here.

Those Tadmur residents who had not fled IS were forced to watch the

horrific murders of government soldiers.

Maybe we'll sit on an old seat,

because these ones have been restored in recent times, but

you know, Don, everything about the city now is this veil of such...

Of despair, because this of course is where the people of Palmyra sat.

I suppose people have played scenes on theatre stages of execution,

but this... Scenes, not real thing.

Played it out for real here.

You know, the theatre of execution,

this incredible theme you're seeing in their behaviour, that repeats.

They find sacred places, places of life,

places that are convivial, public squares and they use those

because they are those very things, as a place of torture and death.

That event, that recorded event in its history

is terrible and impossible to erase, isn't it?

Very little to extract from it that isn't dark and horrible.

Maybe this is all beyond words.

Maybe we should simply sit in silence for a bit

and just hear and think. I would welcome that.

Outside the theatre,

the soldiers escort us to ensure that we avoid any possible mines.

Our government minder shows us where IS also tried

to blow up the theatre and adjoining colonnade.

Daesh, and bomb all of the theatre and that.

The bombs were laid here intending to blow up the colonnade,

but the Army stopped it.

Yeah.

OK, these are very frightening stories.

Very frightening stories.

Don and I return to town to visit the museum, also ransacked by IS.

The model of the city... Yes.

So infantile, isn't it?

Yeah. How terrible.

The model of the Temple of Bel.

They smashed the real temple.

They even smashed the model of the temple.

Maniacs!

Childlike frenzy of hatred.

This is a tool by which destruction is brought.

A hammer. A vast, bloody great hammer.

The murder weapon.

All of the faces, smashed.

Every face. Even the little baby's face, smashed.

I met the director here several years ago,

and there was some wonderful things here that were rescued

from the tombs, discovered in the tombs.

And I came specifically to ask them if I could photograph in the museum

in the first place, because most curators are very tricky about that,

and if he had any light source I could borrow,

because it was quite dark then.

He not only gave me tea, a wonderful reception,

he provided the lights and everything,

and I had the most enjoyable experience here.

That same museum director, Khaled al-Assad,

was murdered by IS.

And he is regarded as a martyr who died in an attempt to protect

the ancient glories of Palmyra.

His two sons have come to Palmyra to meet us.

Your father was very charming, very kind to me.

Your father was Palmyra.

Your father was taken from the mosque?

My father was murdered here.

On this corner?

They show us the exact place where IS executed their father.

It's too painful to listen to. Too much pain.

These people had the audacity, having dragged him

out of this mosque, cut his head off,

and said he wasn't to be buried almost immediately

as people are in Islam, within 24 hours.

They wanted to disgrace him further by not burying him

and hanging him upside down - I mean, it's just too awful for words.

I don't know how those two brothers can come here and talk about it.

I couldn't do that.

Where would one get the courage to speak back like that

with such courage and dignity?

What a man he must've been.

Few people have returned to Tadmur.

The vast majority of the people in this ghost town are soldiers.

They're both our host and protectors.

Is this your wife? Yes. Beautiful.

I'm picking up the smell of a dinner.

I'm now becoming slightly greasy.

Hungry. Hungry? Yeah, of course.

All of a sudden, and man broke out in song.

It was like a lament.

There was a sadness, there was a kind of haunting sound to the music.

The soldier's song is particularly poignant for our government minder,

whose son - a soldier - died in the war.

Although the song may be a performance,

I feel the suffering isn't.

Our last day in Palmyra, and I need to explore the rest of the site.

The 1,900-year-old Temple of Baalshamin -

the god of storms and life-giving rain -

was the most intact of Palmyra's temples.

IS blew it up a week before destroying the Temple of Bel.

The stones are like building blocks, aren't they?

Like some petulant child has knocked the building over

because you can see straightaway, these stones

are in reasonably good condition.

So this is a different proposition.

It's not as bad as I feared.

However, it's still heartbreaking.

Look here. Going to hold a fragment like that.

That part of the column, there is the fluting of the column.

It would have been like that.

Other bits of column over there.

I mean, there has been serious damage,

of course, very serious damage.

Disappointingly, no work has started to conserve the stones

or the toppled monuments.

Even Unesco, which considers Palmyra a World Heritage Site,

has not returned since April 2016

because it believes it's too dangerous here.

To help me make sense of all of this,

Syria's Director of Historical Buildings, Dr Ahmad Deb,

has come to Palmyra.

Yesterday, when I sat amongst the ruins,

I became emotionally overwhelmed with depression.

I've always argued that this building must be recreated.

Why should evil have the last word?

Now, I feel maybe that we leave it as it is.

As a monument to the brutality of Daesh,

a monument to man's inhumanity, to history.

What do you think about that approach?

Palmyra buried its dead in subterranean tombs called hypogeums,

and in architecturally impressive towers.

IS blew up many of these towers.

But there's been no reliable news about the best

of the underground tombs, the Hypogeum of the Three Brothers.

I want to find out what has happened to it.

We're going to the Hypogeum of the Three Brothers,

which I saw ten years ago,

but I'm very interested to know what condition it's in.

I'd love to be able get inside this wonderful underground area.

Dr Deb is on hand to unlock the tomb for me,

which has been sealed since IS left.

And here we see the debris of their occupation.

Books strewn... I'll be careful.

We're not going to pick things up.

That's not what we do. We just look.

Who knows how dangerous things might be?

They only left here less than a year ago.

We are part of this history.

Last time I was here, these beautiful frescoes

adorned the walls.

For me, it's as important as Tutankhamun's tomb

in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.

And they put in this block work?

They did all of this.

These were recesses where the bodies were and there were paintings

here of the faces of the dead.

They survived. But under, now, whitewash.

But look.

Basically, Isis has whitewashed the tomb over the frescoes.

They have survived under this paint,

but this was richly coloured, richly decorated.

As I take it,

I'm the first Western journalist to enter this tomb

since Islamic State was here.

This has not been explored by anybody so far.

But I'm not prepared for what's in the next chamber.

Oh, this is bad!

This is the world-famous fresco,

classical scene with the souls ascending to heaven.

Every book of ancient art has that image in it.

It's gone.

That's been scraped off.

This is something I dreaded in this chamber.

All the architecture decoration,

all the portraits of the dead and the image - I think of Ganymede -

they've all been painted out.

This is a terrible scene. It's a terrible loss.

It takes a bit of time to deal with this.

One of the great wonders of the ancient world I have discovered,

the first person to discover this, I think,

because the men from the museum had not been in there before.

Yes, some can be recovered.

Something can be put right.

But it'll never be the same. Never be the same.

Don wants to take a final shot before he loses the light.

OK.

I always think I'm never finished

and that's the way I've been thinking for the last 60-odd years.

I never think I've come to the end of the road,

but I think I've come to the end of my time here at Palmyra.

Look at that. That's amazing.

I will never come back.

Look at that sky. It is eerie, isn't it?

It's the right kind of recipe

to go with the rest of the tragedy, really.

My pictures, I hope, will say this extraordinary place,

these extraordinary columns and buildings, were made 2,000 years ago

and they are still defiantly standing,

despite what, recently, has happened to them.

And also, it will be like history in clarity.

It will be better for people to come to Palmyra than look at my pictures.

Because once you come to Palmyra,

you're never going to forget it and you're going to go away

and it's going to be forever locked into your mind and imagination.

Our journey has made it clear that the fate of Palmyra

is forever linked to the future of Syria.

And that history, as well as people,

have become the innocent victims of a brutal clash

of politics and ideology.

Coming here has shown that, a year after IS was ejected,

not enough has been done to conserve or repair the city's tumbled stones.

My fear is that if fighting continues,

no-one will be able to come to Palmyra to start work.

This is a crime scene.

It needs further examination and protection before the damage

to these shattered structures get worse.

It is my fervent hope that the great monuments of Palmyra can be brought

back to life, to once again inspire and delight

and to help with the healing of the nation.

Until peace is brokered, Palmyra remains toppled,

the broken heart of Syria.