Ugarit

On the tell of Ras Shamra above the Mediterranean, Ugarit compressed a world-historical gift into clay: the Bronze Age trading kingdom's scribes developed a cuneiform alphabet of thirty signs - the earliest alphabet preserved with a fixed letter order, ancestor-adjacent to every letter this sentence uses - and their tablet archives, dug from the palace ruins since 1929, recorded diplomacy, myth and merchant ledgers in it. The site today walks palace courts, temple platforms to Baal and Dagan, and residential lanes of the city that traded with pharaohs and Hittites until the Sea Peoples' era closed its story around 1200 BC.

The main sights

• The palace archives' courts - where the alphabet tablets lay.
• The temples of Baal and Dagan - the acropolis platforms.
• The merchant lanes - Bronze Age urbanism in limestone.
• The Mediterranean setting - the trade horizon that made the city.

When to go

October to May suits the coastal climate; spring wraps the ruins in wildflowers.

What to expect

On site: remains are foundations asking imagination - the story towers over the stones, and a guide's telling (or prior reading) makes the difference; the great tablets themselves live in museums.

Nearby

Latakia's coast and the Saladin castle inland.

Key facts