Palmyra museum damaged by shelling to be rebuilt with international funding

The Palmyra archaeological museum, which was severely damaged during the Syrian civil war, will be restored with funds from international Swiss-based foundation Aliph, its director told The National.

The site made world headlines in 2015 when ISIS blew up the Temple of Bel, the Arch of Victory and beheaded the Unesco site's head of antiquities. Palmyra also sustained bombing by the Syrian regime and its ally Russia. Most of the population of the nearby city fled and has yet to return.

"We are ready to rehabilitate the museum, its collection and to start to restore part of the site – the guesthouse and the footbridge to the fortress," said Aliph executive director Valery Freland at a conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. The guesthouse is set to house archaeologists working on the 2,000-year old site. Mr Freland did not specify how much the restoration would cost.

There are currently no facilities on site to cater to visitors, though a trickle of tourists continue to visit what used to be Syria's most popular site before the 2011 civil war. Photos of recent visits to the museum, which was built in 1961, show a collapsed roof and a broken sarcophagus from the Palmyrean era. The museum's plaque appears to be hanging sideways by a nail, half blown off. The footbridge is heavily damaged and dangerous to cross.

The cost of the rebuilding project will be estimated once an operator for the museum is appointed and when the plans have been agreed with the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums. Most of the old museum building is likely to remain but large parts are expected to be modernised. Aliph in July announced a two-year programme to protect Syrian heritage sites of $5 million. This includes Palmyra but also the Crac des Chevaliers near Homs, as well as sites in Damascus and Aleppo.

"Palmyra will be one of our flagship projects for the coming months and years," Mr Freland said.

The foundation, which protects heritage sites in conflict, post-conflict, and crisis areas, is mostly funded by nations – France, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, Luxembourg, China, Uzbekistan and Cyprus – as well as private donors.

Aliph was among the organisers of the first major post-war conferences on Palmyra in collaboration with Unesco, the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums of Syria and the University of Lausanne.

The conference in Lausanne brought together experts, academics and international institutions to discuss the way forward for Palmyra. The museum's restoration and safeguarding of its artefacts will take up to three years, said Patrick Michel, senior lecturer at the University of Lausanne's department of ancient science and archaeology.

"The museum will be also a place for the community to gather, to hold events and to welcome new visitors," Mr Michel said. "And the second priority is to not yet restore, but to secure the remaining monuments."

Despite the destruction, the site remains breath-taking for the casual visitor due to its sheer magnitude. "Imagine going to Paris without the Eiffel Tower, the Sacre Coeur and the Louvre museum but you can still walk through its boulevards," he said. "Palmyra is like that."

Also on the agenda were discussions to plan Palmyra's removal from the list of Unesco's World Heritage in Danger, which it and other sites in Syria were added to in 2013 due to the civil war. Placing the site on that list was a way of highlighting the danger of conflict in addition to opening the door to extra funding, said Youmna Tabet, programme specialist at Unesco's World Heritage Centre.

"Palmyra's removal from this listing will signal that it's entered a new, more hopeful era," Ms Tabet said.