Ebla (تل مرديخ)
Near the village of Tell Mardikh (Arabic text in title), the remains of Ebla were found in the 1960's. This old city-state, that dates from the late 3rd millenium BC and that thrived for a second time from about 1900 - 1600 BC, is excavated by Italian archeologists. Ebla is really interesiting and it's a great site. Beautiful finds from Ebla can be seen in museums in Aleppo and Damascus. There's an interesting page on Ebla at the Wikipedia site (new window).
There's a ticket office at Ebla. Maps and signs make it possible for tourists to recognize remains of temples. Unfortunately they are also trying to rebuild/restore the old city, using cement. I think this is sheer vandalism! There's nothing wrong with trying to recreate a city to give people with no imagination an impression of how things once looked like, but one must not do this at the site, destroying or hiding ancient structures.
Maquettes, artists impressions, computer animation et cetera are better options. If people really want to rebuild the city, they should do this at another place, for instance in an open air museum next to the site. Now it's impossible for me to distinguish the new from the old structures.
