The televisions may be stripped away now, but a presidential residence still contains many remnants of a brutal reign.
Red carpets still run down the airy hallways of the mountaintop presidential palace in the Syrian capital, Damascus. Large chandeliers hang in ornate reception rooms filled with wooden Damascene furniture. Modernist sculptures remain in place in offices and sitting rooms.
But since Bashar al-Assad, who ruled Syria for more than two decades, fled the country on Sunday, the armed rebels who burst out of the country’s north and stormed days later into the capital have taken charge of this monument to a brutal reign.
They man the palace gate, keeping out looters and curious civilians. They sleep on couches in a cavernous reception hall. And they marvel at how much it must have cost to build and maintain the giant building from which Mr. al-Assad ruled for so long.
