Palmyra, in the heart of the Syrian Desert, was a rich trading center in Antiquity on the Silk Route between the Mediterranean and Central Asia. The city became a unique meeting place between the cultures of the Graeco-Roman world and the East. Art historian Nigel McGilchrist first visited Palmyra in 1978, and on two further occasions in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, much of what Nigel saw then has been devastatingly destroyed in the Syrian War and is lost to us forever. Nigel has slides, though, that he will share on a “trip” to Palmyra during one of SBMA Travel’s popular Armchair Travel lectures.