Travel: Towering temples of Baalbek

Lebanon's monuments are accessible now, says Michael Haag

FOR THE first time in almost a generation it is possible again to visit the Roman temples of Baalbek, the most gargantuan monuments of antiquity outside Egypt. Since the winding down of Lebanon's 15-year civil war in 1990, the country has been made secure, reconstruction is booming and tourists are returning.

The geography of Lebanon is simple. Beirut lies midway along a narrow coastal plain rising to high mountains, everything tucked into an area half the size of Wales. The Beirut to Baalbek road dips into the Beka'a valley - a vast upland of wheatfields andvineyards suspended between snow-capped mountains. The sky lies close about you, a sensation expressed in Baalbek's name - the Semitic sky god Baal was lord of Bek, the land. To the Greeks and Romans who blended the old worship with their own, this was Heliopolis, City of the Sun.

Here during the first three centuries AD the Romans built magnificently, vaunting gods and empire and raising colossal Corinthian columns to match the capacious landscape. You see them from afar - the Great Temple dedicated to Jupiter, and adjacent to itwhat is sometimes called the Little Temple, though it is larger than the Parthenon. Only close up do you notice the truly modest but elegant circular Temple of Venus, the one thing at Baalbek addressed to the human scale and not to some gigantic conception of the divine.

Statistics convey only something of this. Standing on a platform 12m high, the six surviving columns at the Temple of Jupiter rise another 20m into the shining sky and even then support a 5m-high entablature, the entire assemblage towering to nearly three-quarters of the height of Nelson's Column. You welcome tourists walking into your photographs, for without human figures, insect-like by comparison, you lose all sense of scale.

Though earthquakes and the anti-pagan fervour of early Christianity helped topple much of Jupiter's temple, the so-called Little Temple - which in any other surroundings could only be called stupendous - has preserved its walls and colonnades. It is perhaps the most intact temple to have survived from classical times, and one of the most flamboyantly decorated.

The artist David Roberts, who during his tour of Egypt and the Holy Land in the late l830s made a famous drawing of its massive portal - its slipped keystone suspended almost anti-gravitationally above the heads of lounging locals - described it as "the most elaborate work, as well as the most exquisite in its detail, of anything of its kind in the world."

The carvings of garlands, grapes and vine leaves that adorn the temple have suggested to some that it was dedicated to Bacchus, the god of wine. Certainly the wine of Lebanon has been celebrated since antiquity - and, remarkably, the vineyards of the Beka'a valley maintained production throughout the war, even exporting the prize-winning Chateau Musar to Britain.

There is no more pleasant place to enjoy the local wines with Lebanese mezes and, if you like, fish served up straight from the sea than Jbail, the ancient Mediterranean port of Byblos. For a time it was a Crusader stronghold, a charming town of honeyed stone with a castle and a 12th-century church. At 7,000 years old, Byblos lays claim to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world. Now a charming town of honeyed stone with a castle and a 12th-century church, it was for a time a Crusader stronghold.

The most remarkable sight here is the second millennium BC temple filled with 30 upright obelisks. The notion came from pharaonic Egypt, where they pointed to the divine sun. Here, as you can see from the little doorways cut in some of them, they serve as houses for the local deities.

That is not the only connection between Byblos and ancient Egypt. From Egypt Byblos imported papyrus and re-exported it as scrolls throughout the Mediterranean. It is from Byblos that books (biblia) and the book (the Bible) derive their name. In return for papyrus, gold and bright ideas like obelisks, Byblos sent Egypt shiploads of cedarwood. Fragrant and durable, cedar of Lebanon was highly prized. Solomon built his Temple with it, and the Egyptians used it in their palaces and great Pyramids.

The cedar is the national symbol of Lebanon, and you begin to think you ought to see what is left of those great cedar forests that once covered the mountain slopes. The largest grove is above Bsharre, following the beautiful Qadisha valley up from Tripoli. The slopes below Bsharre fall precipitously into a gorge, terraces of apples, pears and mulberry stepping up to a finally barren mountainscape, chapels on its craggy summits.

A church bell rings, for the Qadisha valley is the spiritual heart of Maronite country. In the grove each summer, the patriarch performs Mass (though some older villagers half cling to the more ancient belief that the trees themselves, often 1,000 years old and more, are deities). But the journey proves better than the arrival, for the grove is down to about a hundred trees and you will see better individual specimens at Kew.

Where the cedar flourishes, however, is on the thousands of Lebanese flags you see everywhere. About half Lebanon's population is Christian, including Maronites, Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics, the other half Sunni and Shia Muslims, and Druze, an offshoot of Islam. The war was about the influence each of these, not to mention the Syrians, Iranians, Palestinians, Israelis and others, would have in the country.

After all the killing, the kidnappings and the destruction, the response of that 90 per cent of the population who never took part in the fighting has been a shared and heightened sense of Lebanese identity, especially among the young. Hence the flags, though new groves of cedars are also being planted high in the mountains from one end of the country to the other.

A good place to base yourself is Beit Eddine, especially for excursions south along the coast to Sidon and Tyre. It lies in the mountainous Chouf district south-east of Beirut, looking back towards the Mediterranean along a terraced valley of vines and fruit trees. Here, early in the 19th century, the Emir Bechir - then ruler of Lebanon - built a fantastical oriental palace of beautifully cut and inlaid stone amid Italian gardens. It is a pleasure in itself, and now also houses a museum collection of provincial Byzantine mosaics.

Evidence of the war is hardly apparent around the country, but in central Beirut, along what was the Green Line, the city looks in places like Berlin in 1945. The National Museum, towards the south end of the divide, became something of a bunker, its treasures gathered together and covered for their protection in concrete. Now the pickaxes are out, and the museum has announced a summer reopening.

But the old Place des Martyrs at the heart of the city was so reduced to rubble that everything had to be swept away, creating a vast swathe as level and clear as an airport runway. A 20-year, privately financed reconstruction scheme aims to make this the new business capital of the Middle East - the engine by which Lebanon is meant, at last, to be hauled clear of the abyss.

TRAVEL NOTES

GETTING TO LEBANON: Campus Travel (0171-730 3402/0171-730 8111) offers flights to Beirut from Heathrow for £242 return. Middle East Airlines (071-493 5681) provides flights for £299 plus £10 departure tax from Heathrow and £20 from Beirut. This is a Pex fare which must be paid at the time of booking.

TOURS: Jasmin Tours (0168 531121) offers a 7-day tour visiting the main sites for £869. Trips go approximately once a month mainly during the spring and autumn. At the moment there is also a 3-night stay in a three-star hotel for £299 bed and breakfast. British Museum Tours (071-636 7169) offers various tours to the Lebanon and Syria including a 7-day tour departing 24 March with Professor Michael Rogers: the trip includes visits to Byblos, Baalbek, Anjar, Sidon and the Mameluk mosques. Price per person, £1,048.

GETTING TO SYRIA: Moonlight Travel (071-490 1490) provides flights from Manchester/London and Stanstead to Damascus starting from £209 return, available until the end of March. In Style (0784 240392) offers flights to Damascus starting from £260 plus £10UK departure tax.

TOURS: Specialtours (071-730 3138) offers a 13-night tour around historic Syria including trips to Aleppo, Palmyra and many other sites. Price per person is £1,985 which includes accommodation, flights, meals, guides, entrance fees, insurance and tour escort. Cox and Kings (071-873 5003) runs several tours around Syria/Jordan and the Lebanon, including a 7-days Highlights of Syria. tour for £945

British Musem Tours (071-636 7169) also offers an 8-day trip to Syria for £1,048 per person.