The largest Roman temple ever built, on stones weighing eight hundred tonnes — and a trip that depends entirely on the security situation.
Baalbek holds the largest Roman temple complex ever built, and it is not close. The Temple of Jupiter’s columns are 19.9 metres tall — the tallest ever raised by the Romans — and the podium sits on stones that weigh more than anything else moved in the ancient world.
It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it is one of the great archaeological sites on earth.
Safety first
This page starts here because it has to.
Baalbek is in the Bekaa Valley, near the Syrian border. Many governments’ travel advice has for years distinguished between Beirut and the Bekaa, with more restrictive guidance for the latter, and the regional situation has changed repeatedly.
Check your own government’s current advice before planning this trip, understand that travel insurance is typically void in an area your government advises against, and take local advice on the day.
Plenty of people visit Baalbek without incident. That does not mean the advisory should be ignored.
The site
Heliopolis — City of the Sun — was a Roman colony, and building on this scale suggests it was intended as a statement about imperial power in the east.
The Temple of Jupiter Heliopolitanus. Fifty-four columns of 19.9 metres surrounded it; six still stand, and they are the single most impressive thing in Lebanon. The scale is difficult to convey — photographs consistently fail because there is nothing to give them size.
The Temple of Bacchus is the reason to come. It is better preserved than almost any Roman temple anywhere, including in Italy — the walls, the columns, the carved ceiling coffers and the enormous decorated doorway are largely intact. It is also larger than the Parthenon, and it was the secondary temple on the site.
The Great Court and the Hexagonal Court, the ceremonial approach.
The Temple of Venus, small, round and elegant, outside the main enclosure.
The trilithon
In the western retaining wall of the Jupiter podium sit three worked limestone blocks, each around 800 tonnes — the trilithon, among the largest stones ever moved by human beings.
In the quarry a few hundred metres away lies the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, cut and never moved, at around 1,000 tonnes, and a further block found in 2014 that is heavier still.
How they were moved is a real and unresolved archaeological question. It is also the reason Baalbek attracts a steady traffic of ancient-astronaut nonsense, which the site does not deserve and which you should ignore. The answer is almost certainly a great deal of manpower, levers, capstans and time — the Romans were extremely good at this — but no one has fully reconstructed it.
Getting there
About two hours from Beirut, over the Mount Lebanon range and down into the Bekaa. The mountain road is spectacular.
A hired car with a driver for the day is the usual arrangement and is the sensible one. Agree the price in advance.
Service taxis and buses run to Baalbek from Beirut via Chtaura and are very cheap.
Organised day tours operate from Beirut and typically combine Baalbek with Anjar — an Umayyad city of the eighth century, also UNESCO-listed and unique in the region — and a Bekaa winery, usually Ksara or Kefraya, which have been making wine here since the nineteenth century and on this land since the Phoenicians.
That combination is the standard day and it is a very good one.
Practical
The site charges and is inexpensive.
No shade, and the Bekaa is hot in summer and cold in winter — it is at 1,150 metres.
The Baalbeck International Festival, held in the temples in summer, has run since 1956 and has hosted everyone from Fairuz to Ella Fitzgerald. Performances between the columns of the Temple of Bacchus are extraordinary. It has been suspended and revived repeatedly according to circumstances.
