Bathed in the glow of the winter sun, the colonnades of ancient Palmyra are perhaps Syria’s most precious sight.

Yet the days when awestruck tourists would clamber through the ruins of Queen Zenobia’s 3rd-century city are long in the past.

In the 13 years since the last coachload of tourists trundled through the desert from Damascus, 150 miles to the southwest, Palmyra has been a place of destruction and barbarism, haunted by recent ghosts rather than those of yesteryear.

Mahmoud al-Btman, like any Palmyran, is extremely proud of his city’s heritage.