At the Edge of Empire: The Art and Culture of Palmyra
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21 Oct
23 Oct
2026
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Aesthetics, Criticism and Theory (ACT)
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Alessandra Ricci
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Image: Funerary bust: the so-called “Beauty of Palmyra,” 190–210 CE, Palmyrene
The ancient city of Palmyra began as a humble trade oasis in the Syrian desert, but at its height, it was one of the greatest cities in the ancient world. At the crossroads of the Roman, Persian, and Arab worlds, Palmyra was a cosmopolitan haven. Here, business was done in Aramaic, Latin, Greek, and Palmyrene, local gods wore Roman dress, and camel caravans carried silk, spices, textiles, and ideas between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.
In this three-lecture series led by Alessandra Ricci, we trace Palmyra’s art, architecture, and religious life as expressions of a deeply hybrid culture that absorbed Greco-Roman, Parthian, and Semitic traditions without ever fully surrendering to any of them, moving from the city’s origins as a desert trading post to its zenith under Queen Zenobia, and examining its temples, funerary portraits, and monumental colonnades as evidence of a society that thought of itself as genuinely cosmopolitan. The series also confronts Palmyra’s more recent, and more tragic history, asking what it means to lose, and to try to remember, a city that always belonged to more than one world.
Online Public Seminar Series on ZOOM
Lectures in this series will be recorded and made available for 24 hours via a secure Zoom link on a scheduled date, subject to scholar consent due to the nature of ongoing research.
P.S: The Zoom link to join the lecture will be shared 24 hours prior to the talk.
Duration -
October 21, 22, 23, 2026
Timing: 6:30 - 8:30 PM IST
Fees
Rs. 3,000 (For student discounts registrations kindly email info@jp-india.org)
Registrations will open on 10-Sep-2026
Alessandra Ricci
Alessandra Ricci is an Associate Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Archaeology and cultural heritage at Koç University in Istanbul. An academic migrant from Rome to Istanbul via the United States, her research interests center on the city of Constantinople, its Asiatic and European hinterlands in the Late Antique and Byzantine periods. As a field archaeologist, she has excavated the monastery of Satyros/Anatellon built by patriarch Ignatios (867-877) in Istanbul where has coordinated public archaeology activities together with a site management plan and a conservation program. She works and publishes on the diachronicity of buildings and their relationship with urban and landscape contexts, on material culture associated with archaeological areas and architecture and on the contemporary reception of Byzantine studies.