Beqaa

A red-roofed town set among the eastern foothills of Mount Sannine.The city center spreads along both banks of the Bardouni River, with the older section of town on the upper elevations of the west bank and the shopping district on the east bank.

Zahle is famous for its good food and it’s a good idea to have a meal in one of the restaurants along the Bardouni river and taste the traditional Lebanese mezze.

A tour of Zahle’s winery is a good way to see how wine and arak are made. Of special interest here are the extensive underground caves built around a natural grotto known and enlarged by the Romans.

Is nested in a plain between the parallel ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains, some 85 kilometers north-east of Beirut.

It is one of the world’s greatest historical sites, the most gigantic complex of Roman temples ever built; its columns are the tallest ever created, its stones the largest ever used. The Acropolis of Baalbeck is the largest and best preserved corpus of Roman architecture left to us. Its temples, dedicated to Jupiter, Venus and Bacchus (larger than Parthenon in Athens).were built in the second and third centuries AD.

Baal-Bek, or town of Baal (who was a Phoenician god) gave the name to the town that is still in use. For a number of years Baalbeck’s flooflit mercurial columns presided over the annual renowned international festival which featured theater groups, orchestras, ballet troupes and performers from all parts of the world.

58 kilometres from Beirut
Unlike other historical sites in Lebanon, Anjar portrays exclusively the Umayyad period. Therefore, it is relatively a new comer since other Lebanese sites were founded millennia ago. Walid the first son of Umayyad Caliph Abd El Malak Ibn Marwan, was believed to have built the city between 705 and 715 AD.

Among the main attractions of Anjar are: The Great Palace, The Little Palace, The Public Bath.