After the loss of Jerusalem, Jewish life in the region reorganised around the Galilee, and the villages of these hills built synagogues of considerable ambition. Bar'am is the most complete of them: a monumental facade of dressed limestone with three doorways, a portico of columns and lintels carved with wreaths and vine ornament, opening onto a hall whose plan can still be read on the ground. Around it lie the remains of the village that used it, and, nearby, the abandoned houses and church of a Maronite community that lived here until the twentieth century. Oak forest and grazing land surround the whole. Filmed in 4K, with light tracked across the carved stone through the day and aerial views of the site in its landscape, the programme suits strands on archaeology, Jewish heritage and late antiquity.
