Hotels in Beqaa, Lebanon

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HOTELS IN BEKAA
HOTELS IN CHTAURA
Chtaura Park Hotel 5* .Chtaura Park Hotel is within sight of Lebanon's famous wineries and Arak distilleries amidst the grapes orchards of the Bekaa. It's within 6 miles (10 Kilometers) from ZAHLE, Lebanon's foremost city of Mezzeh varieties and......From 105$ per room.....(more details and special rates)	Massabki Hotel 4*  Located in Chtaura, the biggest commercial and business center in the Bekaa, where guests can have easy access to all entertainment, leisure, tourism, and festivities.......From 95$ per room.....(more details and special rates)
HOTELS IN ZAHLE
Grand Hotel Kadri 5*  A 40-minute drive from the ancient Roman ruins of Baalbeck, Anjar and many others, the Hotel is conveniently located a minute walk from downtown Zahle and from Bardouni restaurants a name synonymous with Lebanon's famous mezze and the delights of outdoor dining........From 110$ per room.....(more details and special rates)	Holy Joseph Home 3* Located in the noble city "ZAHLE" near the famous spot "El Berdownie" where you can find the finest Lebanese restaurant in Lebanon where you can enjoy eating in a dry climate and joyful environment. 5 min. walking distance from El- Berdownie touristic spot.............(more details and special rates)
Monte Alberto Hotel 2*   Visitors come to Zahlé for many reasons. They travel here to discover the serene scenery to experience best the world renowned Lebanese Cuisine with its infinite variety “mezzes” to taste the national drink “arak”, (an anise flavored.......From 75$ per room.....(more details and special rates)
HOTELS IN BAALBECK
Palmyra Hotel 4* There probably isn't another hotel in the Middle East that evokes the past as much as the Hotel Palmyra in Baalbek. Shabby and somewhat faded as it is, the whole place oozes character. The large rooms with their old-fashioned furniture and Jean Cocteau drawings, grand salon opening onto a balcony with a perfect view of the ruins and cool terrace garden have great charm......From 60$ per room.....(more details and special rates)	La Memoire Hotel 4* .....(more details and special rates)
HOTELS IN BEKAA
West Bekaa Country Club 4* .....(more details and special rates)

Bekaa

Bekaa is a fertile valley in east Lebanon. The Romans considered the Bekaa Valley to be a major agricultural source, and today it remains Lebanon's most important farming region, and a major Shia population center in Lebanon.

Geography

The Bekaa is a fertile valley in Lebanon, located about 30 km east of Beirut. The valley is situated between the Mount Lebanon to the west and the Anti-Lebanon mountain ranges to the east. It forms the north eastern most extension of the Great Rift Valley, which stretches from Syria through the Red Sea into Africa. Bekaa Valley is about 120 km in length and has an average width of about 16 km. From the 1st century BC, when the region was part of the Roman Empire, the Bekaa Valley served as a source of grain for the Roman provinces of the Levant.

Today the valley makes up 40 percent of Lebanon's arable land. The northern end of the valley, with its scarce rainfall and less fertile soils, is used primarily as grazing land by pastoral nomads, mostly migrants from the Syrian Desert. Farther south, more fertile soils support crops of wheat, corn, cotton, and vegetables, with vineyards and orchards centered around Zahle. Since 1957 the Litani hydroelectricity project-a series of canals and a dam located at Lake Qaraoun in the southern end of the valley-has improved irrigation to farms in Bekaa Valley.

Districts and towns

Zahle is the largest city and the administrative capital of the Bekaa Governorate. It lies just north of the main Beirut-Damascus highway, which bisects the valley. The majority of Zahle's residents are Lebanese Christian, including those belonging to the Armenian Apostolic Church, Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Maronite Church, and members of the Greek Orthodox Church. The town of Anjar, situated in the eastern part of the valley, has a predominately Armenian Lebanese population and is also famous for its 8th-century Arab ruins.

The majority of the inhabitants of the northern districts of Bekaa, Baalbek and Hermel, are Lebanese Shia & Sunni, with the exception of the town of Deir el Ahmar, whose inhabitants are Christians. The western and southern districts of the valley have a mixed population of majority Sunni, Christian, and Druze Lebanese. The town of Jib Janine with a population of about 9,000, is situated midway in the valley, and its population is Sunni. Jib Janine is a governmental center of the region known as Western Bekaa, with municipal services like the emergency medical services (Red Cross), a fire department, and a courthouse.

Due to wars, poverty, unstable economic and political conditions, and failures within the agricultural sector, many previous inhabitants of the valley left for the coastal cities of Lebanon or emigrated from the country altogether.

Landmarks

Bekaa is also rich in archaeology and history has left some of its most famous monuments scattered all over this region.

. The Aammiq Wetland habitat for a myriad of migrating and resident birds and butterflies

. The Umayyad ruins of Anjar - An archaeological site excavated 40 years ago and one of the few surviving ruins of the 8th century Umayyad period.

Anjar was a hunting grounds and a resort for the traveling princes of the period. Still intact are the city's walls and gates surrounding the twin palaces of the Caliph. The remains of 600 shops indicate that Anjar was also an important trading centre that drew traders from all corners of the land. Arcades, engravings and symbols show the Roman-Byzantine influence on the Umayyad architecture.

. The ancient Roman ruins of Baalbek, an ancient city named for the Canaanite god Baal. The Romans renamed Baalbek "Heliopolis" and built an impressive temple complex, including temples to Bacchus, Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun. A new temple has been discovered in 1995 and is being excavated and an Umayyad mosque still stands in the city centre. Today, the ruins are the site of the Baalbek International Festival, which attracts artists and performance groups from around the world.

. The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Bechouat

. Hermel has two interesting sites:
o A pyramid believed to be the tomb chamber of a Syrian prince around the 2nd century BC,
o The monastery of St. Maroun which is a grotto carved in the mountain rocks.

. Zahle was once called "The Bride of the Bekaa" because of its natural beauty and marvelous scenery. Located on the banks of the Bardouni River where there are many riverside restaurants famous for their cuisine.

. Our Lady of Bekaa, a Marian shrine located in Zahle, with panoramic views of the valley.

. Roman Ruins, located in the town of Kab Elias

. Phoenician Ruins, located in the village of Kamid El-Lowz

. Lebanon's tallest minaret, located in the town of Kherbet Rouha

Wines

The Bekaa Valley is Lebanon's most important farming region. It is also home to its famous vineyards and wineries. Wine making is a tradition that goes back 6000 years in Lebanon. With an average altitude of 1000 m above sea level, the valley's climate is very suitable to vineyards. Abundant winter rain and much sunshine in the summer helps the grapes ripen easily. There are more than a dozen wineries in the Bekaa Valley, producing over six million bottles a year.

Chtaura & Zahle

Zahle enjoys a prime location in the Beqaa valley. Snowcapped mountains tower above it in winter, while in summer its 945 meter elevation keeps the air light and dry. 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. At the northern end of town is the Bardouni river valley known as Wadi El-Arayesh (Grape Vine Valley) - the site of Zahle's famous outdoor restaurants.

Zahle was founded about 300 years ago in an area whose past reaches back some five millennia. In the early 18th century the new town was divided into three separate quarters, each of which had its own governor. The city enjoyed a brief period as the region's first independent state in the 19th century when it had its own flag and anthem. Zahle was burned in 1777 and 1791, and it was burned and plundered in 1860.

But during the rule of the Mutasarrifiah, Zahle began to regain its prosperity. The railroad line which came through in 1885 improved commerce and town became the internal "port" of the Beqaa and Syria. It was also the center of agriculture and trade between Beirut and Damascus, Mosul, and Baghdad

Baalbeck

Baalbek is a town in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, altitude 3,850 ft (1,170 m), situated east of the Litani River. It is famous for its exquisitely detailed but monumentally scaled temple ruins of the Roman period, when Baalbek, known as Heliopolis was one of the largest sanctuaries in the Empire. It is also home to the annual Baalbeck International Festival. Baalbeck is home to the Lebanese Red Cross first aid, medical & social, and youth center as well as mobile clinics. The town is located at about 85 km north east of Beirut.

The history of Baalbeck dates back around 5000 years. Excavations near the Jupiter temple have revealed the existence of ancient human habitation dating to the Early Bronze Age (2900-2300 BC). The Phoenicians settled in Baalbeck as early as 2000 BC and built their first temple dedicated to the God Baal, the Sun God, from which the city got its name. 19th century Bible archaeologists wanted to connect Baalbeck to the "Baalgad" mentioned in Joshua 11:17, but the assertion has not been taken up in modern times. In fact, this minor Phoenician city, named for the "Lord (Baal) of the Beqaa valley" lacked enough commercial or strategic importance to rate a mention in Assyrian or Egyptian records so far uncovered, according to Hélène Sader, professor of archaeology at the American University of Beirut. Nevertheless, it must have been the site of an oracle from earliest times, for oracles are not lightly founded, and retained such a function during Roman times.

The city retained its religious function during Roman times, when the sanctuary of the Heliopolitan Jupiter-Baal was a pilgrimage site. Trajan's biographer records that the Emperor consulted the oracle there. Trajan inquired of the Heliopolitan Jupiter whether he would return alive from his wars against the Parthians. In reply, the god presented him with a vine shoot cut into pieces. Theodosius Macrobius, a Latin grammarian of the 5th century AD, mentioned Zeus Heliopolitanus and the temple, a place of oracular divination. Starting in the last quarter of the 1st century BC and over a period of two centuries, the Romans had built a temple complex in Baalbeck consisting of three temples: Jupiter, Bacchus and Venus. On a nearby hill, they built a fourth temple dedicated to Mercury.

The city, then known as Heliopolis (there was another Heliopolis in Egypt), was made a colonia by the Roman Empire in 15 BC and a legion was stationed there. Work on the religious complex there lasted over a century and a half and was never completed. The dedication of the present temple ruins, the largest religious building in the entire Roman empire, dates from the reign of Septimus Severus, whose coins first show the two temples. The great courts of approach were not finished before the reigns of Caracalla and Philip. In commemoration, no doubt, of the dedication of the new sanctuaries, Severus conferred the rights of the ius Italicum on the city. Today, only six Corinthian columns remain standing. Eight more were disassembled and shipped to Constantinople under Justinian's orders, for his basilica of Hagia Sophia.

The greatest of the three temples was sacred to Jupiter Baal, ("Heliopolitan Zeus"), identified here with the sun, and - constructed between the first century BC and 62 AD - was the largest temple in the empire. With it were associated a temple to Venus and a lesser temple in honor of Bacchus (though it was traditionally referred to as the "Temple of the Sun" by Neoclassical visitors, who saw it as the best-preserved Roman temple in the world - it is surrounded by forty-two columns nearly 20 meters in height). Thus three Eastern deities were worshipped in Roman guise: thundering Jove, the god of storms, stood in for Baal-Hadad, Venus for 'Ashtart (known in English as Astarte) and Bacchus for Anatolian Dionysus.

The Roman construction was built on top of earlier ruins and involved the creation of an immense raised plaza onto which the actual buildings were placed. The sloping terrain necessitated the creation of retaining walls on the north, south and west sides of the plaza. These walls are built of monoliths at their lowest level each weighing approximately 400 tons. The western, tallest retaining wall has a second course of monoliths containg the famous "trilithon"; a row of three stones each weighing in excess of 1000 tons. A fourth, still larger stone called "the stone of the south" (Hajar el Gouble) or "the stone of the pregnant woman" (Hajar el Hibla) lays unused in a nearby quarry. Had it been freed from the quarry, it would have been the largest stone ever moved, larger than the famous unfinished obelisk in Aswan. Another of the Roman ruins, the Great Court, has six 20 m-tall stone columns surviving, out of an original 128.

DEIR TAANAYEL

ANJAR

Anjar - AN UMAYYAD SITE OF LEBANON

Anjar, 58 kilometers from Beirut, is completely different from any other archaeological experience you'll have in Lebanon. At other historical sites in the country, different epochs and civilizations are superimposed one on top of the other. Anjar is exclusively one period, the Umayyad.
Lebanon's other sites were founded millennia ago, but Anjar is a relative newcomer, going back to the early 8th century A.D.

Unlike Tyre and Byblos, which claim continuous habitation since the day they were founded, Anjar flourished for only a few decades.

Other than a small Umayyad mosque in Baalbeck, we have few other remnants from this important period of Arab history.

This almost perfect quadrilateral of ruins lies in the midst of some of the richest agricultural land in Lebanon. It is only a short distance from gushing springs and one of the important sources of the Litani River. Today's name, Anjar, comes from the Arabic Ain Gerrha, ''the source of Gerrha'', the name of an ancient city founded in this area by the Arab Ituraens during Hellenistic times.

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