Not that it should put you off, but Hama was also the scene of one of the nastier episodes in Syria's recent history, when the al-Assad clan decided to sort out their pesky Islamist problem by ... well, killing them all, basically. In 1982.
Please excuse the source (I had to read it for professional reasons, honest! and I didn't buy a copy!), but this sounded absolutely bloody amazing if ruins hold any interest for you:
"Call to mind London’s Regent Street. Suppose it straight, not curved. Suppose it about the same width but more than twice as long: a mile and a quarter. Picture it lined on each side not with shop fronts but with richly carved marble columns, more than 2,000 of them, approaching the height of Regent Street’s roof line. Top those columns with supporting massive, decorated stone lintels laid across. Picture the street paved not with tarmac but with stone slabs rutted with the grooves of a million cart and carriage wheels. Imagine it as the Champs Elysées of an imperial Roman city. Now place it on a high, stony, plateau in Syria, overlooking the wide valley and rich farmland of the Orontes river. Call it Apamea.
It existed. It still does. Much of it is there today, standing alone in the middle of bare fields in open country, hardly observed, some of its columns fallen in earthquakes, hundreds of them (I counted 606) upright. Surely this is a wonder of the world! Where are the tourist buses? Where are the guards?
But there are no perimeter fences, no entrance gates, no hordes of tourists, no armies of caretakers: nothing but a little warden’s hut at one end. "
.... and much more at:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/columnists/3665968/another-voice.thtml
Another fantastic reason to visit Syria - and the food's meant to be top-notch too. (Apparently one particularly touchy aspect of the Syria / Lebanon relationship is that they can't come to an agreement on whose falafel or baklava is the better....)
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