Baalbek

Nowhere else did Rome build on quite this scale. On a hill in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, where the city of Heliopolis once worshipped a local storm god under the name of Jupiter, the imperial architects raised a sanctuary on a platform whose retaining walls are made of single stones. Three of them, set in a row in the western wall and known since antiquity as the Trilithon, are each more than 19 metres long and weigh in the region of 800 tonnes. A still larger block, the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, lies abandoned in a quarry at the edge of town, and an even heavier one was found beside it.

The Temple of Jupiter was finished around AD 60 and once stood inside a ring of 54 Corinthian columns. Earthquakes, stone robbing and Justinian's order to ship eight columns to Constantinople for Hagia Sophia have left six standing, still carrying their entablature about 19 metres above the ground; the capitals facing south are almost crisp, those facing north have been scoured by the Beqaa winds. Next to it, the Temple of Bacchus, probably completed under Septimius Severus in the 190s, is one of the most complete Roman temples anywhere, because the rubble of its neighbours protected it. Its portico of columns nearly 20 metres high and the carved ceiling and doorway are the finest work on the site.

The complex was entered through a monumental staircase and portico, then a hexagonal forecourt added in the 3rd century, then a vast colonnaded court with the great altar. In the Middle Ages the whole acropolis became a fortress, and much of the walling visitors walk past today is 13th-century Mamluk work by Sultan Qalawun. A short walk away stands the small round Temple of Venus, later a church. UNESCO inscribed Baalbek in 1984, and the ruins have long been the setting for the long-running Baalbeck International Festival.

The area was bombed during the 2024 Israel–Hezbollah war, when UNESCO placed the site under enhanced protection.

Getting there

The temples stand on the edge of the modern town of Baalbek, under 1 km from its centre. The practical gateway is Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport (BEY), about 70 km away in a straight line; Damascus International Airport (DAM) is a similar distance but lies across the Syrian border. Beirut is around 67 km southwest as the crow flies, and the road crosses the Mount Lebanon range before running up the Beqaa Valley.