Northern Syria has a landscape of limestone hills crowded with the shells of ancient villages, and the Jebel Sem'an, the Mountain of Simeon, is the heart of it. Between the fourth and seventh centuries, when this region was a prosperous corner of the late Roman and then Byzantine world, farmers grew olives and grapes on the stony hills and built their homes, churches, baths and presses of fine dressed stone. When trade routes shifted and the Arab conquests came, the villages emptied, but the buildings were so solid that they remained, roofless but recognisable. The best of them, grouped into a number of parks, were inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2011 as the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria.
Kafr Nabo is one of them, and it holds a surprise: a temple of an older faith that was later turned into a church, a reminder that these hills were pagan before they were Christian. Near it the great church of Saint Simeon, built in the fifth century around the pillar on which the ascetic Simeon the Stylite spent decades of his life, was once the largest church in the world. Pilgrims came from across the Mediterranean to see him, and the ruin, with its four basilicas around a central octagon, is among the finest early Christian monuments anywhere.
The Jebel Sem'an lies in a part of Syria that has seen heavy fighting in recent years, the monuments suffered damage, and the region has been closed to most visitors. Official travel advice from nearly every country advises against any visit. The nearest towns, Nubl and Afrin, are both sizeable, but conditions on the ground are unpredictable.
What can be said is how the landscape looks in peaceful times. The hills are rocky and pale, scattered with olive trees, dry-stone walls and fields of wheat, and in spring they are green and dotted with red poppies. The air is clear, the soil is thin, and the ruins, with their arched windows and carved lintels, stand against the sky like drawings. It is a place to look forward to visiting one day, when the situation allows, and for now to read about in the work of archaeologists and travellers who knew it before.