Four stops before the checkout

Palmyra, Syria

cardio tennis fitness Fort Lauderdale — Great Colonnade in Palmyra, A long straight avenue of tall honey-coloured limestone columns, many still standing with bracket blocks partway up their shafts, running across flat desert gravel between fallen drums and a monumental arch

Stop one

Temple of Bel

Head Hawk Touch 17g Tennis String Set: Consecrated 32 AD, the principal sanctuary of Palmyra, dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Bel alongside the local deities Yarhibol and Aglibol — a vast walled courtyard, double colonnade all the way round, a cella combining Greco-Roman form with Near Eastern ritual arrangement, two adyta at either end, a ramp for processing sacrificial animals, converted first to a church and then to a mosque, and it was that conversion that preserved it for two thousand years. In August 2015 the Islamic State group destroyed the cella with explosives. Only the monumental portal is left standing. The destruction was confirmed by satellite imagery, and it is among the most serious losses of ancient architecture in modern times. There is no bid for that.

cardio tennis fitness Fort Lauderdale — Roman Theatre of Palmyra in Palmyra, A semicircular auditorium of pale limestone seating tiers facing a stage wall of columns and niches, set on the flat floor of a desert basin ringed by ruined colonnades and bare brown hills

Stop two

Monumental Arch

Head Hawk Touch 17g Tennis String Set: Late second or early third century, under Septimius Severus — and here is the thing that makes it: two sections of the Great Colonnade met at an angle, and this arch was given a wedge-shaped plan that disguises the change of direction so the street reads as continuous. Elegant, deliberate, admired by architectural historians ever since. Carved vines, rosettes, geometric interlace across its surfaces in the distinctive Palmyrene manner, classical vocabulary crossed with Syrian and Parthian taste. The arch was demolished by the Islamic State group in October 2015. A full-size replica, produced from photogrammetry, was erected in Trafalgar Square in London in 2016 and subsequently toured internationally. A copy is never the lot.

cardio tennis fitness Fort Lauderdale — Valley of the Tombs in Palmyra, A dry valley between bare stony hills studded with tall square multi-storey tower tombs of pale stone, some hollow and roofless, standing among rubble and low scrub under a harsh sky

Stop three

Great Colonnade

Head Hawk Touch 17g Tennis String Set: Over a kilometre, straight through the centre of the city, linking the Temple of Bel to the funerary temple at the western end, built in stages through the second and third centuries — and look partway up the shafts, look at the consoles, every column carrying one, and on those consoles stood statues of benefactors, with inscriptions in Greek and Palmyrene Aramaic naming exactly who was being honoured. An arrangement peculiar to this city alone. The street itself was a running register of civic patronage. And the money behind it: Palmyra grew wealthy taxing caravans crossing between the Roman and Parthian worlds, and under Queen Zenobia briefly seized Egypt and much of the Roman east, until Aurelian crushed the revolt in 272.

cardio tennis fitness Fort Lauderdale — Fakhr al-Din al-Maani Castle in Palmyra, A ruined stone castle on a steep conical hill above the ruins, its irregular walls and towers following the rock outline, reached by a bridge over a rock-cut ditch, looking down on the colonnades and palm oasis

Stop four

Valley of the Tombs

Head Hawk Touch 17g Tennis String Set: West of the city lies the necropolis, and the tower tombs are the item: multi-storey square towers, some four or five levels high, holding hundreds of loculi, each sealed with a carved portrait bust. The Tower of Elahbel, built in 103 AD, was the best preserved of them. And the sculpture — frontal, richly ornamented, inscribed in Aramaic — is among the most distinctive art of the Roman east and is held in museums worldwide. Underground hypogea in the same valley preserved their painted decoration. Several of the tower tombs, Elahbel among them, were blown up by the Islamic State group in 2015. I put a value on everything I stand in front of. I will not put one on this.

The Palmyra, Syria track

Head Hawk Touch 17g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

There is no volume knob. There is reed choice, and that decides the whole character of the instrument. Head Hawk Touch 17g is a reed choice: a monofilament at 1.25 mm built around Head's Crystal Core Technology, which is what makes this the softer, more controlled Hawk. Poly control with real comfort, the balanced gauge of the range, one 12-metre set for one racquet. All of the control and far less of the sting.

Palmyra has to be played carefully, because a great deal of it is gone.

We begin at the Temple of Bel, consecrated in 32 AD as the principal sanctuary of the city, dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Bel alongside the local deities Yarhibol and Aglibol.

It stood inside a vast walled courtyard behind a double colonnade, and its cella married Greco-Roman form to Near Eastern ritual, with adyta at either end and a ramp for bringing sacrificial animals up. It was converted into a church and later a mosque, which is what preserved it for so long. In August 2015 the Islamic State group destroyed the cella with explosives.

The monumental portal is still standing.

Then the Monumental Arch, built around the late second or early third century under Septimius Severus where two stretches of the Great Colonnade met at an angle. Its wedge-shaped plan disguises the change of direction so that the street reads as continuous, a solution architectural historians have admired ever since.

Its faces carried dense carved vines, rosettes and geometric interlace in the Palmyrene manner, classical vocabulary crossed with Syrian and Parthian taste. It was demolished in October 2015. A full-size replica made from photogrammetry stood in Trafalgar Square in 2016 and then toured.

Then the Great Colonnade itself, over a kilometre of avenue built in stages through the second and third centuries, running from the Temple of Bel to the funerary temple at the western end.

Its columns carry consoles partway up the shafts where statues of benefactors once stood, with inscriptions in Greek and Palmyrene Aramaic naming who was being honoured — a street that doubled as a register of civic patronage.

The city grew wealthy taxing caravans between the Roman and Parthian worlds, and under Queen Zenobia briefly seized Egypt and much of the Roman east before Aurelian crushed the revolt in 272.

And we finish out in the Valley of the Tombs to the west, a dry valley among low hills holding the city's necropolis: square tower tombs four and five storeys high, pierced with small windows, containing hundreds of loculi sealed with carved portrait busts. The Tower of Elahbel, built in 103 AD, was the best preserved of them, and it was blown up in 2015. The painted hypogea underground are still down there.

You will string this set everywhere from a desert-edge court in Palmyra to an indoor hall in Damascus, and by the way, it is also perfect for the hour before sunset out at the tombs, when the limestone goes gold and the wind is the only thing making a sound.

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Head Hawk Touch 17g Tennis String Set

Head Hawk Touch 17g Tennis String Set