Inside Syria VR | ABC News #360Video

up here on the wall of the Citadel Damascus lies out before you the capital of Syria which thousands have fled to neighboring countries and Europe this is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world join me on this tour of some of its most important sites threatened by this devastating war in the distance there to the left those mountains near the border with Lebanon have seen some fierce fighting and to your right a bird's-eye view of the historic old city which despite the war remains the beating heart of the capital and from here you can see the three minarets of you MyID mosque one of the grandest and holiest in Islam there are a few places in the world like the Umayyad Mosque here in Damascus where you can feel the depth of history a place that is sacred to so many different people and different religions so follow me around I want to point out a few different parts of this incredible mosque down there at the end you can see those tall beautiful pillars those were once part of the Roman temple of Jupiter but then in the 4th century this became a church and if you look up there you can see the stunning mosaics of that church inside there's a shrine to John the Baptist who Muslims revere as a great prophet and then when the Muslims had taken over Damascus in the eighth century this became a mosque one of the biggest and most beautiful mosques in the world down there at the end is another shrine that is said to contain the head of Hussein the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and then finally up there peeking out from over that roof is a bell tower from when this was a church and then a minaret built right on top of it that's the minaret of Issa or jesus and that's where many Muslims believe that Jesus will come back to earth here inside the shrine of John the Baptist with worshipers paying their respects just outside it's a short walk to the gate where Paul the Apostle is said to have fled after converting to Christianity and if you turn around the entrance to the teeming souk al Hamadi residents of Damascus even as the war rages nearby still come to this soup on a daily basis they run errands here they buy household goods even lingerie and if you look up you can see the corrugated iron roof it still has bullet holes in it dating back to World War one but across town in the now-closed National Museum archeologists are racing against the clock to safeguard their country's treasures at this station in the center of the room is photograph the artifacts extracted from conflict zones and logged their serial numbers saved sometimes in the nick of time from Isis and other looters and then over here these young volunteers pack them up carefully with cotton and gauze placing them into these chests that will then be taken to top-secret storage facilities nearby behind reinforced doors and multiple layers of security rarely accessible one of the oldest synagogues in the world it dates back to the third century built in eastern Syria in the 1930s the French reconstructed it in Damascus to preserve it all around these stunning paintings depicting scenes from the Old Testament to the left of this altar Moses being rescued from the nile river just above it a representation of the 12 tribes of Israel and down below under the National Museum this Palmyra encrypt reconstructed here years ago it comes from the city that Isis now controls and dates back to the Roman period the same era as the temples that Isis blew up in August 2015 these relief portraits that you see all around our tombstones that represent members of the same family that buried its dead in this 2,000 year old underground tomb this and all the treasures you've seen here aren't just part of Syria's heritage but the world caught between the warring sides safe for now

Channel: ABC News

Views: 28,134

Keywords: Virtual Reality (Media Genre), vr, syria, isis, Damascus (City/Town/Village), News (TV Genre), 360 video

Id: Qt-tu7YBTYg

Length: 5min 38sec (338 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2015