Before anything else: read is Beirut safe and how much Beirut costs. The first tells you what to check before booking; the second tells you to bring US dollars in cash, which is not optional.
With that done: Beirut is a small city, it is compact enough to see properly in three days, and it rewards knowing what you are looking at more than almost anywhere.
Very little here explains itself. The buildings are ambiguous, the ruins are unlabelled, and the recent past is not on any wall. Read as you go.
Day one: downtown, and the war
Morning. Start at Martyrs’ Square. Look at the bullet holes in the statue, which were deliberately left in when it was restored.
Then the Mohammad al-Amin Mosque — robes provided — with Rafic Hariri’s grave outside it, and the Maronite cathedral immediately beside it.
Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral and, more importantly, the crypt museum underneath it: seven layers of building on one spot, from Hellenistic to Ottoman, in forty-five minutes. It is the clearest short account of Beirut’s history anywhere.
Late morning. The Roman Baths and the cardo, then Beirut Souks — for the exposed archaeology and the architecture rather than the shops, most of which are shut.
The Egg, from the street.
Lunch. Downtown is expensive and quiet. Walk east into Gemmayzeh and eat there.
Afternoon. Gemmayzeh on foot — Rue Gouraud end to end, then up the Saint Nicolas stairs into Achrafieh.
Sursock Museum — free, in a 1912 Venetian-Ottoman villa, wrecked by the port blast and reopened in 2023. The reassembled stained glass is the thing.
Evening. Mar Mikhael for dinner and a drink.
Day two: the museums and the sea
Morning. The National Museum. Three hours, and watch the film in the basement first — it is about how the collection was saved during the war by encasing it in concrete, and everything upstairs means more afterwards.
Midday. The MIM mineral museum is fifteen minutes away and is genuinely world class. Two hours.
Eat in Badaro, between the two.
Afternoon. Cross to Hamra. The bookshops, and AUB if you have arranged access — bring ID to the Bliss Street gate.
Late afternoon. Down onto the Corniche and walk west to Raouché for the Pigeon Rocks at sunset. This is the best two hours in Beirut and it costs nothing.
Evening. Dinner in Hamra, or back east.
Day three: out of the city
Byblos, an hour north. Seven thousand years of occupation in one mound, a Crusader castle built out of Roman columns, and a fishing harbour to eat lunch in.
Do the archaeological site in the morning — there is no shade — and combine it on the way back with Jeita Grotto or the Harissa cable car above Jounieh.
Baalbek is the greater site — the largest Roman temples ever built — and requires you to have read the current travel advice for the Bekaa. It is a full day with a driver.
If you have a fourth day
Horsh Beirut if it is open, Beit Beirut if it is open, Basta for the antique shops, and Bourj Hammoud, the Armenian quarter, for the best food shopping in the country.
Or go to the mountains — the Chouf, the Cedars, Beiteddine palace, or the Qadisha Valley, which is a UNESCO site of monasteries cut into a gorge and is one of the most beautiful places in the Mediterranean.
The things this itinerary does not include
The southern suburbs and the Palestinian camps. They are not sights, visiting them as a tourist is unsafe and unwelcome, and “conflict tourism” in a city where people are still recovering is not something this guide will help with.
Swimming off the Beirut shore. See the beaches — the water is not clean.
Practical shape
Bring US dollars in cash. Small, clean notes.
Ask your hotel about generator backup before booking. It is the most important question.
Taxis and service taxis for everything — see getting around. Beirut is walkable within districts and not between them.
Check road closures before crossing the city; protests can shut routes at short notice.
Take local advice daily. People will tell you plainly if something is a bad idea today.
Pacing, and what most itineraries get wrong
Beirut is small and the temptation is to fill it. Do not.
The city is heavy. Three days of downtown, the National Museum, Beit Beirut and the port takes you through a civil war, an assassination, an economic collapse and an explosion that killed more than two hundred people, and it is a lot to absorb in seventy-two hours.
Build in the light parts deliberately: a long mezze lunch that takes four hours, an evening on the Corniche, a morning that consists only of a manousheh and a coffee.
Lebanese people will do this for you if you let them. The hospitality here is not a tourism cliché — it is insistent, it is genuine, and accepting it is the point.
If you only have two days
Do day one as written, then compress day two: the National Museum in the morning, the Corniche at sunset. Skip Byblos, which is a real loss.
What to check the night before, every night
Whether the roads are open. Protests can close routes, including the airport road, at short notice.
What people are saying. Ask your hotel and ask your driver. They will tell you plainly whether something is a bad idea today, and they are a better source than anything published.