First published: 28/11/18.

Martina Rúčková 5.0

Baalbek

Baalbek (Inscribed)

Baalbek by Martina Rúčková

Save it for the last if you can, because not only is Baalbek the most stunning WHS of Lebanon, but even after couple of hundred sites visited, many many Roman ruins included, it still blew our minds and exceeded all our expectations. Just wow. 

Baalbek site, located inside Baalbek, the administrative centre of the Bekaa valley and one of the places you wlll be advised against travelling to in Lebanon, contains spectacular ruins of Roman temples of Bacchus, temple of Jupiter and temple of Venus. They were built on a magnificent scale, 23 metres high, with columns 2.2 metres in diameter. The sheer scale of everything is mind-blowing. I enjoyed climbing on top of one of the large Corinthian-style column head. Another awesome thing, you can walk around, climb wherever you want, without some nasty local guard whistling at you to shoo away (greetings to Delphi). There are two museums on-site: one in the medieval tower and another in an underground tunnel on your way back. There's also a small tourist info centre by the ticket office, though at the time of our visit it was blessingly vacant with some booklets of other sights, in Arabic only.

We got there with a car, passed some checkpoints on the way, but nobody checked our passports, the soldiers just waved us away with attests to the calm situation in the area. No Hezbollah check points I've read about in other blogs. But you will feel it's a Hezbollah territory, especially by the souvenir vendors offering their prime product: a Hezbollah t-shirt. There's a parking spot by the site and from there it's about 500 metre walk to the entrance. The site had a number of tourists, but they dispersed due to the sheer size of it. It was the highlight of our trip to Lebanon and I really enjoyed it. If you're looking for a reason to visit the country of the cedar tree, this is it.

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