Apamea, Syria

Apamea was an ancient city on the Orontes river in western Syria, founded around 300 BCE by Seleucus I and named after his wife Apama. It was the military base of the Seleucid kingdom, where its war elephants were kept, and later a large Roman city with a colonnaded street nearly 2 km long. Its ruins, near modern Qalaat al-Madiq, were badly looted during the Syrian civil war.