Places breaingram Wants to Go

Three members of Syria's ruling family entombed in quiet mountain town.

A 1,500-year-old ghost settlement is slowly fading away.

What is left of the pillar of Saint Simeon, the voluntary martyr who climbed the column to give his sermons, remaining perched there for thirty-seven years.

Groups of prehistoric tombs that dot the mountains of northern Oman.

An imposing Omani fortress surrounded by date palm trees.

This bazaar is one of the oldest in the Arabian world.

A sinkhole and now a swimming hole, too, full of dazzling turquoise water.

This beautiful arched gate is all that remains of the fortress the ancient mountaintop town of Amadiya once was.

An ancient sanctuary that has long been a holy site for the Chaldean Christian Church.

The sacred shrine of the Yazidis.

An ancient fortified mound raised over the millennia from settlements built one on top of the other.

Ancient rock-cut tomb? Definitely. That of a great Median king? Unlikely.

A bloody history is captured in this former prison turned museum.

9th century Abbasid mosque, damaged in modern warfare.

A 605-page Quran penned in the blood of a dictator is locked away in a mosque.

A giant bisected onion dome remembers the Iraqis who died in the Iran-Iraq War.

This former monument to an invented Iraqi victory was turned into a military camp during the subsequent invasion.

Celebrated as a center of civilization, the remains of the ancient city have been nearly destroyed by greed, egoism, and war.

Giant reed houses made in the marshes of Southern Iraq.

A shrine on the shores of the Tigris.

The most gigantic, swoony, intimidating trio of fingers in all of antiquity.

One man's labor of love, Amman's oldest home has become a time capsule with its doors permanently open to artists and guests.

Gladiators battle and chariots race daily in the ruins of a once-great Roman city.

The world's oldest map of the holy land gives us a fragmented glimpse of the layout of biblical nations.