The oldest church in Beirut, with an archaeological museum in the crypt showing a Roman street under a Byzantine church under a Crusader cathedral.
Two cathedrals of Saint George stand within a hundred metres of each other in downtown Beirut — one Greek Orthodox, one Maronite Catholic — and one of them has an archaeological museum in its basement that is the best hour of history in the city.
The Greek Orthodox cathedral
The oldest church in Beirut, on a site of continuous Christian worship since at least the fifth century.
The present building is largely of 1767, rebuilt after earthquakes, with a nineteenth-century interior. It was badly damaged during the civil war — the Green Line ran nearby — and was restored and reopened in 2003.
The crypt museum
Excavations during that restoration went down through the floor and found the site’s whole history stacked up.
The museum, opened in 2012, lets you walk under the church at the level of the earlier buildings. What is exposed, in order downwards:
- The eighteenth-century church foundations
- A medieval church of the Crusader period
- A Byzantine church, probably fifth or sixth century, with mosaic
- Byzantine and Roman tombs, some with skeletons in place
- A stretch of Roman street with drainage
- Hellenistic and earlier material below that
It is small, it is well lit, the walkways are glass, and the interpretation is good. It costs very little and it takes forty-five minutes.
The reason to prioritise it is that Beirut’s history is almost entirely invisible above ground — the city has been flattened by earthquakes, wars and developers so many times that there is very little continuous fabric. Here you can see the layers, in order, under one floor.
The Maronite cathedral
Saint George Maronite Cathedral, next to the Mohammad al-Amin Mosque, is of the 1890s in a neoclassical style modelled on Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.
It was gutted during the war and restored afterwards, and it stands, deliberately or not, in the shadow of the mosque built beside it in 2008.
The Maronites are an Eastern Catholic church in communion with Rome, with their own liturgy in Syriac and Arabic, and they are central to the history of Lebanon — the modern state exists in the form it does substantially because France created a country in which they would be a plurality.
Practical
The cathedral is free; the crypt museum charges a small fee.
Hours are limited and it closes around services and on some days — check before making a special trip, and note that the whole of Nejmeh Square has been subject to security closures for years, with access varying.
Dress modestly. These are working churches.
The Greek Orthodox and Maronite cathedrals, the mosque, the Roman cardo and the Grand Serail are all within a few minutes of each other, which makes downtown a compact and genuinely dense hour and a half — see Martyrs’ Square and Downtown.
More Landmarks
Raouché and the Corniche
Two limestone stacks in the sea and five kilometres of seafront promenade — the one place the whole city shares.
Mohammad al-Amin Mosque
A blue-domed mosque of 2008 standing beside a Maronite cathedral, with the grave of the man who built it outside.
Martyrs' Square and Downtown
A statue full of bullet holes, and a rebuilt city centre that a great many Beirutis have never forgiven.