Site of Palmyra

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The ruins of the Graeco-Roman and Persian-influenced caravan city in the Syrian desert, inscribed in 1980. Palmyra was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2013, along with all six of Syria's World Heritage properties, as a blanket response to the armed conflict. After the Islamic State group took the site in 2015 it destroyed the Temple of Baalshamin and then, in late August 2015, the Temple of Bel — a first-century structure whose destruction UN satellite imagery analysis confirmed — along with tower tombs and the monumental arch. The site's retired head of antiquities, Khaled al-Asaad, was murdered there in 2015. Palmyra is the case that shows the limit of the Convention: it has no enforcement arm, and against a party that regards the heritage itself as the target, listing offers documentation and, later, prosecution — but no protection in the moment.