The ancient and the new

The Arg-e Bam or Bam Citadel is an impressive site, despite half of the place remaining in ruins.

Once the largest adobe (which I discovered means non-baked clay or earth) building in the world, it was its own enormous walled city, situated at an important point on the Silk Road, joining Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The actual citadel sits on a hill and towers over the city below it, surrounded by a thick wall that encircles the city.

Sadly in 2002 the buildings which had stood for more than a thousand years -the city peaked between the seventh and eleventh centuries, was destroyed by a massive earthquake. The Government of Iran immediately promised to rebuild the city and work is well under way - but one of the challenges is to mimic the various building styles used in the city over a millennium - particularly challenging given modern buildings in Iran all seem to be steel and cement.

It also raises some interesting questions about authenticity and the tourist experience. What does it mean to go to see an ancient city that has been built in the last 10 years? And how faithful should the reconstruction be?

Reading the Hungry Planet about Iran it had a classic quote about another old city in Iran, "readers have complained given the state of the ruins it is not worth visiting ...." Lesser sites, lesser because they remain more untouched and authentically showing the strains of weathering and time, are less attractive and less visited. (Having myself seen lesser or completely unreconstructed Mayan ruins in Guatemala - largely old temples that appear as hills on an otherwise flat plain - it does require quite a bit of imagination as compared to the impressive (reconstructed) temples at Tikal.) It many ways the quality of enduring whilst everything else around goes on changing both falling down and being built up- the pyramids in Cairo are a case in point - is one of the things that make ancient buildings so impressive. Conversely the act of travelling to a (reconstructed) place also seems to act on the mind and encourage some imagining of what human places were once like.

Sitting on the ramparts at Arg-e Bam, looking down at the city below, and then to the desert as it stretches out flat across the plain to the mountains that rear up on the horizon, hiding Afghanistan and Pakistan (once part of the Persian empire) and beyond to Asia behind them, it was easy to imagine this city as an oasis in the distance for weary travellers. A place to rest, take succour and trade.