Lebanon
Lebanon Holiday
Currently re-establishing itself as an exciting holiday destination, Lebanon is growing in popularity. Our Lebanon Explorer tour will take you back in time as you visit ancient ruins dating from the times of the Crusaders and Romans.
Enjoy spectacular views of Beirut at Harissa, visit the spectacular acropolis of Baalbeck and take a tour of Beirut City during your tour.
The Lebanon Explorer makes a wonderful contrast to Jordan and Dubai and can be combined with any of our featured itineraries.
To the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran, Beirut was the city that "died and was reborn a thousand times". It's true that the history of the Lebanon is a perpetual tale of destruction and resurrection, ever since its foundation by the Phoenicians in the 3rd millennium BC. There must surely be more than a tenuous connection between the Phoenicians and the phoenix, the legendary bird said to build its own funeral pyre and rise anew from its ashes.
This small strip of land between the mountains and the sea was assailed by wave upon wave of conquerors: Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Franks and Turks. Every conquest brought its share of devastation, but also a promise of regeneration. The proud Phoenicians could never be quashed. Long before the Greeks, they sailed far afield, beyond the confines of the Mediterranean to the west coast of Africa, even to Britain.
Once the wars had settled, nature intervened-and with a vengeance. No wall, no temple could resist the fury of an earthquake like the one that hit the Phoenician coast in AD 551, claiming thousands of victims. Buried deep beneath the cities of Tyre and Sidon, Byblos and Beirut, are the memories of those dark days, when for once slave and master were on an equal footing.
These cities were never abandoned, but most of the material traces of their former inhabitants were lost. When Beirut's city centre was flattened, archaeologists had to race against the clock to unearth vestiges of the past before the contractors moved in. Proof of a Canaanite settlement was discovered: burial jars and stone city gates 5,000 years old, and a wall that once defended the Phoenician Beruta in the 7th century BC. Such finds were some recompense for the 15 years of war that left such an inglorious scar on the modern history of Lebanon. Who can tell what future awaits Beirut, the outrageously large capital of one of the smallest countries in the world? Once, and not so long ago, it was a prosperous city and a fine example of communal coexistence.
Lebanon is about half the size of Wales, so it's easy to visit its other fascinating cities where the historic legacy has been preserved: Baalbeck, inland, and Byblos, Sour and Saida (old Tyre and Sidon) and Tripoli on the coast.