Athena Review Image Archive ™
Baalbek, site plan
Baalbek, site plan (Athena Review Image Archive)
Baalbek (Roman Heliopolis), a town located in the northern Bekaa valley of Lebanon, was settled as early as 1700 BC during the Middle Bronze Age. It became a religious shrine center in the 1st century BC. In 16-13 BC, during the reign of Augustus, the town was settled by Roman legionaries as an adjunct to Berytus (Beirut), and began to flourish as a religious center. When Berytus opposed Septimius Severus in the civil war of AD 194-196, Baalbek was transformed into one of the the largest religious sanctuaries in the Roman world.
The center of the site is the Acropolis, consisting of the Great Court, flanked on the west by the vast 1st century Temple of Jupiter (equated with Baal) and on the south by the 2nd century Temple of Bacchus. To the east are the Octagonal Court and Propylea, the last structures to be added, built in the mid 3rd century AD.
Some two hundred meters southeast of the altars on the Great Court, and separated from them by a colonnaded street, were the much smaller Temples of the Muses and Venus, the former built in the 1st century, and the latter in the beginning of the 3rd by the Severan emperors.
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