Apamea (Greek: Ἀπάμεια, Apameia; Arabic: أفامية, romanized: afāmiyah), on the right bank of the Orontes River, was an ancient Greek and Roman city. It was the capital of Apamene under the Macedonians, became the capital and Metropolitan Archbishopric of late Roman province Syria Secunda, again in the crusader period.

Amongst the impressive ancient remains, the site includes the Great Colonnade which ran for nearly 2 km (1.2 mi) making it among the longest in the Roman world and the Roman Theatre, one of the largest surviving theatres of the Roman Empire with an estimated seating capacity in excess of 20,000.

The site lies on the edge of the modern town of Qalaat al-Madiq, about 55 km (34 mi) to the northwest of Hama, Syria, overlooking the Ghab valley.

After the conquest of the region by Alexander the Great and the subsequent wars between his generals, and according to the new interpretation of a new historical and iconographic source for Hellenistic history, a mosaic of Apamea discovered in 2011, proposed by Olszewski and Saad, the foundation of Pella, the Macedonian military camp (katoikia) took place in the fall 320 BC, just after the Treaty of Triparadeisos (320 BC) at the initiative of Antipater, and Cassander's inspiration. In view of this interpretation, the authors disagree with the earlier hypothesises attributing the foundation of Pella to Alexander the Great or to Antigonus I Monophthalmus. From about 300 BC Pella receive a new status of polis, was fortified and established as a city (polis) by Seleucus I Nicator who named it after his Bactrian wife, Apama, daughter of the Sogdian warlord Spitamenes. The site was enclosed in a loop of the Orontes which, with the lake and marshes, gave it a peninsular form whence its other name of Cherronêsos. It was located at a strategic crossroads for Eastern commerce and became one of the four cities of the Syrian tetrapolis. Seleucus also made it a military base with 500 elephants, and an equestrian stud with 30,000 mares and 300 stallions.

After 142 BC, the pretender Diodotus Tryphon made Apamea the base of his operations.

Q. Aemilius Secundus did a population survey of the city and its territory which belonged to it in AD 6, in which he counted "117,000 hom(ines) civ(ium)" – 117,000 citizen human beings, a figure that has been interpreted as giving a total population of either 130,000 or 500,000, depending on methods used.

In 64 BC, Pompey marched south from his winter quarters probably at or near Antioch and razed the fortress of Apamea when the city was annexed to the Roman Republic. In the revolt of Syria under Quintus Caecilius Bassus, it held out against Julius Caesar for three years till the arrival of Cassius in 46 BC. On the outbreak of the Jewish War, the inhabitants of Apamea spared the Jews who lived in their midst and would not suffer them to be murdered or led into captivity. Apamea was briefly captured in 40 BC by the Pompeian-Parthian forces.

Much of Apamea was destroyed in the 115 AD earthquake, but was subsequently rebuilt.