“You can’t drill a hole in Lebanon without finding Roman remains,” our guide explained as we waited to explore the extraordinary temples at Baalbek.
He may have been exaggerating for the benefit of his assembled band of tourists but there’s no denying that the country is rich in the remains of empire. From the rooftop of our Beirut hotel we could see a series of excavations in Martyrs’ Square, with archaeologists hard at work in the heat uncovering layers of Phoenician, Roman and Ottoman history. Elsewhere in the city we found more remains, including a bathing complex, that were revealed during the reconstruction of the Beirut Central District. But nothing could compete with the temples at Baalbek, deep in the Bekaa Valley. These are beyond superlatives, Lebanon’s greatest treasures, and we explored them on a day that also saw us discovering the influence of Rome a mile or so from the Syrian border and in a winery elsewhere in the Bekaa.
There was no way on earth I would’ve done the trip independently. For a start, driving in Lebanon is akin to playing Russian roulette and not something I ever want to experience. Second, Baalbek and parts of the Bekaa are areas the UK Foreign Office advises against visiting because of the risk of terrorism, so it made sense to do an organised tour. As it turned out, we never once felt threatened or remotely in danger.
A long trip meant an early start through Beirut’s chaotic traffic, then up and over the Mount Lebanon range of mountains that separate the coast from the wide plain of the Bekaa. Much of the main Beirut-Damascus road is an endless ribbon of development, the city merging with towns and villages. Only towards the top of the range at around 1,500m do the villages start to thin out. This is a part of Lebanon that was once a popular summer holiday spot for wealthy Lebanese and even wealthier visitors from neighbouring countries, who relished a retreat from the heat and humidity of the coast and interior. But these days many of the mansions are shells, shadows of a long-ago time before the Civil War. Only now, our guide suggested, are people beginning to return.
The mountains’ upper slopes proved to be bleak, much deforested, brown and parched. A few goats scraped around for something to eat in the dust, and a few brave attempts had been made to plant trees. The road carved its way down the slopes, through checkpoints and scrappy settlements. Beyond, in the morning haze, lay the Bekaa, a vast plain that stretches to the Anti-Lebanon mountain range and the Syrian border. The valley is the agricultural heart of Lebanon, full of orchards and fields of veg flourishing in the richest red soil I’ve seen anywhere. Ramshackle villages and temporary huts made of bits of wood, fabric and plastic provided shelter and homes for agricultural workers. We passed a town that was mostly a Palestinian refugee camp, and it looked desperately poor and cobbled together, its people making as much as they could out of almost nothing. Equally depressing was the litter, which drowned the ploughed fields and piled up alongside the roads. The Bekaa is scarred with rubbish, much of it plastic bottles, and there really is no excuse for it.
A mile or two from Syria we came upon Anjar. It was once an Umayyad settlement, founded by an ambitious Caliph in the early 8th century on important trade routes between the coast, Damascus and beyond. It boasted hundreds of shops, bath houses, palaces and a mosque but its glory days lasted but a few decades and it then went into a rapid decline. It’s a remarkable spot – quiet, remote, free of the tourist hordes. And although UNESCO bills it as an Umayyad settlement (it’s a World Heritage Site), it’s clear that there is much of the earlier Roman Empire in its bones, from the road layout to the physical stones and columns that the 8th century builders refashioned to make their own version of home. The sun burned down on us and the red earth oozed heat as I explored and tried to rebuild the ruins in my imagination.
Anjar hints at its Roman past but Baalbek – another UNESCO site – lays it on thick. Its giant temples are extraordinary and lie in the heart of the modern town but, surprisingly, archaeologists are still working to uncover the Roman city the temples served. Modern Baalbek is as chaotic and battered as many other Bekaa towns and villages and while it’s a Hezbollah stronghold, it remains home to people of many denominations and none, site of the oldest mosque still open in Lebanon as well as Christian churches. Just a few years ago it would’ve been impossible for us to visit because of the risk posed to westerners by kidnappers but today locals rely heavily on tourism.
We stopped first at an ancient quarry, famous for what’s billed as the largest carved stone in the world. And it is huge, no doubt intended for one of Baalbek’s bonkersly big buildings until someone decided to leave it where it rests today. We walked on through one of the oldest parts of the city, with its traditional homes and narrow alleys, passed over a fetid stream full of rubbish and came face to face with the Temple of Venus, which is currently closed off to visitors and also the least interesting visually of the three temple complexes.
More interesting is the Temple of Jupiter and the various courtyards that precede it. We climbed a flight of steps in the punishing heat, walking through centuries of history, for Baalbek is more than just Roman. The site was called Heliopolis by Alexander the Great and his Greek armies, was conquered by the Phoenicians, Ottomans and others too. They rebuilt the city in their own style, refashioning what had gone before, and the structural layout that remains, including a hexagonal courtyard, hints at the influence of those invaders. We emerged into a vast courtyard in front of the Temple, littered with stones decorated with intricate carving and large baths for cleansing those animals that had been selected for sacrifice. Our knowledgeable guide showed us stones where pagan carving and sculpture had been left unfinished, representing that moment when the new Christian religion arrived in the valley.
Much of the rubble that lies across the site is the result of earthquakes that have shaken the region over the centuries. The Temple of Jupiter was a victim of those quakes, as well as the enthusiasm of locals to use the stones to build elsewhere in the town. This giant space – a temple on an epic scale – was once enclosed by 58 towering columns but only 6 remain standing today, and they had been draped in scaffolding to allow for restoration work. Nothing could prepare us, though, for the reveal of the Temple of Bacchus that sits alongside Jupiter. It’s another giant, the most complete of the temples, supported by columns and built out of huge blocks of stone. I was stunned by its grandeur and the beauty of its carvings. It was even more astonishing to learn that little more than a century ago much of it remained buried under rubble and earth. A wall plaque unveiled by Kaiser Wilhelm II and graffiti left by 19th century visitors high above us on the walls showed just how much the archaeologists had cleared away.
Our visit over, we left town and drove back the way we came through security checkpoints and the Bekaa’s villages to the attractive town of Zahle, which wraps itself around a gorge at 1,000m above sea level and is known for its wine and pleasant climate. We stopped for a deluge of delicious Lebanese food and got chatting with our eclectic group – the lone Australian travellers, the gay Americans, the Indians, a few scattered Europeans and an elderly Armenian couple who never failed to entertain with their incessant chatter. The wife loved our final stop, if only because it meant free wine.
Chateau Ksara was founded by the Jesuits in the 19th century and its vineyards pepper the Bekaa today. Our brief tour included a tasting of their cheaper, average plonk and a visit to the caves and cellars that burrow into the hillside. We stopped at the shop and bought a bottle of one of the nicer and pricier reds, which we tried later in the week in an Armenian restaurant in Beirut and rated highly.
The caves are cool and damp and, according to the enthusiastic guide, stretch back to Roman times. But we decided that that walk was just too far so we clambered aboard the bus and headed for Beirut instead.