City
Palmyra
Tudmur
Listen to the story
Palmyra, the city of palms, grew up around an oasis in the Syrian desert, where the town of Tudmur in Syria stands now. As a caravan station and a great market for Indian goods it became very rich, and it was the seat of Odenathus and Zenobia until the emperor Aurelian conquered it in AD 273. The map adds two small quirks: the name is split in two because it was written across the join of two parchment sheets, and the road from Centum Putea runs just below the city instead of into it, most likely a copyist's slip.