LEBANON

Aanjar is an update on history. This Umayyad-period town was excavated only 40 yearsago. Thanks to extensive reconstruction, the visitor gets a clear idea of what the town looked like when the Damascus-based Umayyad caliphs ruled the area.

Just 5 km before Beiteddine, Deir Al Qamar is a village of white houses and red-tiled roofs. It was the residence of the governors of Lebanon in the 16th-18th centuries. Town’s historical treasures including the Fakhreddine mosque 16th century, palaces and administrative building of Lebanon’s governors.

Harissa known for the magnificent statue of our Lady of Lebanon with its cathedral of a Phoenician boat shape, where we can take the cable cars down to Jounieh enjoying its unique and spectacular bay view.

A beautiful drive into the mountain south east of Beirut brings you to Lebanon’s very own Alhambra, an 18th –19th Century palace of richly decorated ceilings, colorful marble mosaics, luxurious Turkish baths and Harem suites in a setting of beautifully groomed gardens. A folkloric museum occupies one wing. In the palace’s renovated stables are an exquisite display of mosaics from a ruined Byzantine church and other structures of the same period.

Sidon is the largest city in south Lebanon, a busy commercial center with pleasant, conservative atmosphere of a small town. Since Persian times, this was known as the city of gardens and even today, it is surrounded by citrus and banana plantations. Visit of the Sea castle, a fortress built by the Crusaders in the early 13th century on a small island connected to the mainland by a causeway. You will visit as well the caravanserail.

Jeita is Lebanon’s natural miracle, a striking nine kilometers labyrinth of galleries on two levels. The lower, river level offers a unique tour by flat-bottom boat past “weeping willows” and gigantic stone flowers. Equally striking is the upper grotto where monstrous mineral animals crouch in shady corners.

Byblos is the most ancient port in the world, and the perfect introduction to the many layers of civilization that has existed in Lebanon from at least the fourth millennium BC. Walk round the ruins from the Phoenician period from where King Ahiram’s sarcophagus was found, its inscription using the first ever alphabet. Also see the curious temple of the Obelisks dating from 1800 BC and the remains of a palace from the Persian occupation, the Roman Theatre and Nympheum, the well- preserved Crusader castle of 1108; the Crusaders’ Church of St. John and the surrounding streets and souks.

Since the first days of recorded time, Lebanon is known as the land of Cedars, and today it is still the emblem decorating the Lebanese flag. The tourist, who visits the ruins of Byblos, Tyr, Baalbeck, or Anjar, will not fail to visit the grove of Cedars to admire the specimens there, majestic and millennial. For centuries, the Phoenicians celebrated as ship builders in cedar wood, sailed the Mediterranean exporting not only their famous purple powder extracted from murex shells but also the precious cedar wood. These forests were so exploited that only a small forest remains with a centerpiece grove of 400 cedars, some of which are more than 1500 years old.

Towering high above the Bekaa plain, their monumental proportions proclaimed the power and wealth of Imperial Rome. The Greeks identified the god of Baalbeck with the sun god and the city was called Heliopolis or City of the Sun. The temple was never built; some huge construction from the Hellenistic project can still be seen. The temple complex of Baalbeck is made up of the Jupiter Temple and the Bacchus Temple adjacent to it. A short distance away is the circular structure known as the Temple of Venus.