Baalbek

Baalbek is a city in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, about 67 kilometers northeast of Beirut, whose history reaches back at least 11,000 years and which the Greeks, after Alexander the Great's conquest in 334 BC, renamed Heliopolis, City of the Sun. Its fame rests on a Roman temple complex begun in the first century AD, dominated by the Temple of Jupiter, largely completed around AD 60, and the adjoining Temple of Bacchus with its richly carved Corinthian capitals, both raised on a platform that incorporates the Trilithon, three of the largest finished stone blocks ever used in construction; excavation in 2014 uncovered a nearby unfinished block roughly 19.6 by 6 by 5.5 meters and estimated at 1,650 tonnes, among the largest stones ever quarried in antiquity. The site continued in use through the Christian and Islamic periods, including construction of an Umayyad mosque, before decline under Ottoman rule and later earthquake damage. UNESCO inscribed Baalbek as a World Heritage Site in 1984, describing it as one of the finest examples of Imperial Roman architecture at its height.