Our travelers roam Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth, a great metropolis bountifully bequeathed with exquisite mosques and mausoleums. We explore Krak de Chevaliers, an imposing Crusader fortress that T.E. Lawrence considered “the finest castle in the world” and one of the most perfect examples of medieval defensive architecture (Peter Wilshire of the Times of London had a less pragmatic take. He called it the “model for every sandcastle ever built.”) We meander in the suq at Aleppo (where Murder on the Orient Express begins), one of the greatest marketplaces in the Middle East. We admire the Roman and Byzantine wonders of Apamea and the walled city of Resafa (favorite stomping grounds of Harun al-Rashid of The Thousand and One Nights). And we’re awestruck by one of the grandest ancient sites in the world, the forest of colonnades at Palmyra, which led the great Arabist Gertrude Bell to “wonder if the wide world presents a more singular landscape.”