An opaque sheet of plastic covered the second-floor windows of the Palmyra Hotel in the Lebanese city of Baalbek, blocking the view of the Temple of Jupiter, one of the largest and best-preserved sanctuaries of the Roman world.
The hotel’s thick windowpanes were shattered by an Israeli air strike on 7 November, which hit an Ottoman-era building across the street, reducing it to a pile of skeleton-grey rubble. After the blast, the antique wooden doors that have been open for visitors since 1874 were blown off their hinges, furniture overturned, and copper dinner plates scattered across the ornate tile floors.
The hotel was empty at the time of the strike, the normal crowds of tourists too scared to venture into Baalbek, which is in the Beqaa Valley. The Israeli army has issued multiple evacuation orders for the entire historic city and then has proceeded to pound it with air strikes. On 21 November alone Israeli strikes killed at least 47 people in the Baalbek region. For many of these strikes, no evacuation orders were issued by the Israeli military ahead of time.
Dust from the nearby strikes still lingered on the hotel’s Victorian decor and black-and-white framed photos hung on the walls. A short, grey-haired man strolled down the dark hallway, periodically stopping to sweep with his feathered broom. This was Manal Abbas, and after 56 years of working at Palmyra Hotel, it meant more to him than his own home. So, despite the surrounding danger, he would stay to care for it. “I’ve spent my life here, more than I’ve spent in my home,” 77-year-old Abbas said.
He recounted late nights serving drinks to the celebrities who frequented the hotel. “The stereo was always on at night. Festivals were held and ballets would come. We would stay up until morning,” Abbas said. The French poet and playwright Jean Cocteau, jazz singers Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone, and iconic Lebanese singers Fairuz and Sabah are just a few of the stars who once booked rooms. “Fairuz was a formal [woman], who didn’t usually interact or joke with anyone, she’d go straight to her room,” Abbas remembered. “Lady Sabah used to be popular and she also loved the people. If I [was] grumpy or sad she’d do anything and tell me to smile for her.”
Over time, the hotel has become something of a time capsule. Artefacts collected over the hotel’s 150 years are on display in every corner: letters from its famed guests, fragments of Roman columns, newspapers dating from 1926, and excavation surveys of Baalbek’s acropolis, which comprises several Roman temples. Albert Einstein even allegedly left his diaries during his stay.
Like many other artefacts of heritage and history, these are all at risk of destruction in Israel’s war, which it says is against Hezbollah targets, in Lebanon. It is another devastating and tragic outcome of the war in Lebanon, which has killed more than 3,580 people and wounded over 15,200 – the death toll steadily climbing.
“Baalbek is our pride, not just for those who live in Baalbek, but for all the Lebanese people,” the governor of the Baalbek-Hermel region, Bachir Khodr, told me. “But the heritage sites don’t belong to us: they’re for humanity and targeting them is a crime against humanity.”
The strike on the Ottoman-era building, across the street from the Palmyra Hotel, also damaged other historic buildings in Baalbek’s Menshieh neighbourhood. They sit just metres away from the city’s treasured Roman acropolis. “We still don’t know why this [Ottoman] building was targeted,” Khodr said, who is certain there were no Hezbollah military assets inside. “Is it punishment?” he wondered.
I requested a response from the Israeli army on why the historic building was hit. After giving the GPS coordinates and date, they could not give me a reason for the specific attack. They instead sent a generic reply: “The IDF [Israel Defence Forces] targets military objectives belonging to the terrorist organisation Hezbollah, employing all feasible precautions to minimise harm to civilians and civilian objects,” adding that “each strike that poses a risk to a sensitive structure is weighed carefully and goes through a rigorous approval process.”
An earlier strike on 6 October hit near the Temple of Bacchus in Baalbek – often described as the most beautifully decorated Roman temple – destroying part of the acropolis’s ancient stone wall. Khodr said that they wouldn’t know the extent of the damage to the temples until they are inspected by professionals once the bombardments cease.
This destruction has become a pattern. “For several weeks now, Israel has systematically targeted cultural heritage sites in Lebanon,” wrote Howayda al-Harithy, a professor of architecture and urban design at the American University of Beirut (AUB). “The physical destruction of buildings, monuments, and artefacts is just the surface of a deeper wound – an assault on collective memory and identity. Cultural heritage is central to a people’s sense of belonging and their connection to their land and history.”
Lesser-known Roman ruins around Baalbek, in the villages of Qsarnaba and Douris, have also suffered damage from Israeli strikes, Khodr told me. In response to a worried call from hundreds of heritage experts, Unesco on 18 November announced that 34 Lebanese sites would benefit from “enhanced protection”. Khodr wasn’t comforted: “I don’t know how much Israel will respect such a designation by Unesco.”
[See also: Lebanon’s blood-soaked history]
While heritage experts were gathering in Paris to discuss the Unesco designation, an Israeli air strike on 18 November hit a water-pumping station, just about 100 metres from the hippodrome in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre. The hippodrome, which dates back to the first century AD, had a crowd capacity of 40,000 spectators – considered the second largest of its kind. Chariots once raced around its perimeters, as well as runners and pentathlon athletes competing in the ancient Olympic games.
“Every day there is shelling above Tyre and every day I say ‘oh my God’, because we don’t even know what the damage has been to these [heritage] sites,” Ali Khalil Badawi, an archaeologist from Tyre, told me. (As I was writing this piece, notifications blared on my phone from the Israeli military demanding an evacuation of Tyre; minutes later, footage of mass plumes of smoke over the ancient city flooded my various group chats.)
“These kinds of missiles, they make everything shake,” Badawi said, noting his concern for the damage to monuments’ foundations. “Already, we were facing problems in their preservation status and their stability. They are ancient structures, already fragile, they are not built to resist this kind of action.”
Tyre was once the metropolis of Phoenician civilisation, Badawi told me, the capital of a marine empire. The Phoenician king, Hiram, lived in Tyre during the tenth century BC, transforming its ports into some of the first international ports of the ancient world. During his reign, ship manufacturing and astronomy developed, enabling seamen to sail greater distances. They transported an abundance of goods, including cedarwood, olive oil, artisan glass decorations and purple dyes. And through this vibrant Mediterranean trade, the Tyrians spread the alphabet, bringing literacy to many parts of the world.
“Tyre is small, from its water seafront to another seafront, it’s not more than 1 kilometre, so any place could be next to a [historical site],” Badawi explained. “Every time something happens, it affects all of the homes.”
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Israel has also devastated border towns and villages around Tyre, along with their heritage sites and communal spaces. Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported on 5 November that the Israeli army had, through bombardment and its ground offensive, razed 37 villages in southern Lebanon and destroyed more than 40,000 homes in an area 3km wide along the border.
The 150-year-old St George’s Church in the southern village of Derdghaya was targeted in an Israeli air strike on 9 October. The church belonged to the Melkite Greek-Catholic community in the village, who had opened its doors to shelter rescue workers and civilians. At least eight civilians residing in the church were killed in the blast.
The border village of Mhaibib – levelled by a series of Israeli explosions – is known for an ancient shrine, built for the biblical figure Benjamin, the last child of the patriarch Jacob and the grandson of Abraham, according to the Old Testament. Other mosques and shrines have also been destroyed in the border villages of Yaroun, Maroun al-Ras and Blida.
“Every destroyed mosque, church, or communal space is more than just a building,” writes the AUB professor, al-Harithy. “These sites are repositories of shared memories, rituals and collective histories. For the people of Lebanon, they are not only symbols of religious or historical significance but centres of daily life, economy, community, and identity. Their loss cuts deep into what it means to belong.”
Israeli air strikes have turned most of the historic marketplace in the southern city of Nabatieh into piles of charred rubble. There were 12 historic residential buildings and 40 shops from the late 19th century in the marketplace, their ornate, rounded window frames and stone walls beautiful exhibitions of Ottoman architecture. For more than a hundred years, the city’s Monday market would attract locals and those from neighbouring towns and villages.
As I walked through the large heaps of debris in Nabatieh, I could only imagine what the market used to be: spices, nuts, meats and perfumes on display, busy with shoppers eating falafel or mashawi (grilled meat) kebabs from street stands. Now stray dogs and cats darted across the empty streets, under an eerie silence broken only by the rumble of Israeli warplanes.
The still-standing marketplace of Baalbek is a reminder of what has been destroyed elsewhere. Vendors selling fresh meats and olives smiled warmly as I passed their shops. Others called out, “Welcome, welcome.”
Zeinab Habib, 58, stood outside her shop in the market, where piles of colourful carpets were stacked inside. The carpet shop has been open for 60 years, Habib told me, owned by her husband and before that his father. Now, she said that business was very slow. “Before the war we used to manage to pay our daily expenses, but now, there isn’t any [business],” she said. She barely makes $10 each day.
Past Habib’s shop, at the entrance to the market, 57-year-old Hussein el-Watar was selling tiny meat pastries called sfiha – a Baalbek specialty. Their warm, sweet dough holds a bit of spiced meat. “When it comes out of the oven, its taste is unlike any other,” El-Watar told me, as he handed me one to try.
For generations El-Watar’s family has owned the sfiha shop in Baalbek. “It dates back to my grandfather’s grandfather… when the Ottoman empire existed,” he said, proudly. Just across the street an Israeli air strike had turned a building to rubble, his family shop barely escaping damage.
Like 77-year-old Abbas, caring for the Palmyra Hotel, El-Watar did not want to leave his city, in spite of the danger. He described himself as one of the “parents” of Baalbek, who “will be staying in our homes”. “This is my country, the country of my ancestors, the country of my parents, and the country of my loved ones,” he told me. “We love Baalbek and all of us are one hand and one soul.”
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