On the edge of Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, surrounded by mountain ranges, sits the city of Baalbek. Known as ‘Heliopolis’ (City of the Sun) in antiquity, the city is home to an impressive Roman temple complex, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984.
Evidence of human activity at Baalbek dates back 10,000 years, but the site’s development in the ancient world reached its peak in the early 3rd century AD. Baalbek Reborn: Temples, a new app created by the Ministry of Culture – Directorate General of Antiquities, Lebanon; the German Archaeological Institute (DAI); and Flyover Zone, offers a virtual tour around the religious centre of the city, with digital reconstructions of the temples in AD 215, and audio narration by DAI archaeologists (available in English, French, German, or Arabic) providing information about 38 locations around the site.
The Sanctuary of Jupiter
Your visit begins with a bird’s-eye view of Baalbek and an introduction to the city and its surroundings. The importance of water and the fertility it brought to the region was key to the development of the sanctuary at Heliopolis, which is situated at the highest point in the Beqaa Valley, near the sources of the Litani and Orontes rivers.
A world of discoveries