Mari

Mari, the mound of Tell Hariri near the Iraqi border, controlled Euphrates trade for a thousand years and its Great Royal Palace was one of the wonders of its age: nearly three hundred rooms around courtyards, with wall paintings, archives and a throne room, buried when the city fell to Hammurabi around 1760 BC. More than twenty thousand tablets came out of it. The palace was excavated under a protective roof, and the mound stands in irrigated river country at the desert's edge.

What's there

• The Great Royal Palace - the maze of nearly three hundred excavated rooms.
• The throne room court - the ceremonial heart of the palace.
• The temple terraces - the sacred buildings above the town.
• The Euphrates setting - the river country the city taxed.

When to go

March to April and October to November are bearable; summer in the far east is extreme. The river country is greenest in spring.

Things to know

The site is very remote and suffered looting in the 2010s; the protective roof partly collapsed and the mudbrick has weathered. Getting there requires local arrangements that change. The finds are in museums.

Nearby

Dura-Europos is upriver, and Deir ez-Zor is northwest.