Baalbeck Roman Temples

The Baalbeck Roman Temples are located at Baalbeck, also known as Heliopolis, in the Beqaa Valley, Lebanon, just south of the source of the river Orontes. The Trilithons are the largest in the world.
It is Lebanon’s greatest Roman Monument and is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Baalbeck was located in the Province of Syria.

The Roman Temples are located in the ruins of Heliopolis, ‘City of the Sun’, founded in 334 BCE by Alexander the Great. It had already been a site of pilgrimage to the Greeks, as well as the Phoenicians, who had been worshipping there for 5,000 years.
‘Heliopolis’ was known to the Greeks and Romans, along with the Heliopolis at Giza in Egypt, as one of the largest Sanctuaries in the Roman Empire and a site of Pilgrimage.
The Romans built three colossal Temples here to Jupiter, Venus and Bacchus, with a fourth Temple built nearby to Mercury.
Baalbeck was the site of an Oracle, which was visited by the Emperor Trajan,

Macrobius (c.400 CE) wrote in Saturnalia.i.23, that at the time when Alexander the Great passed through, the priests of Baalbeck, the Syrian Heliopolis, were sent from the Great Temple of Ra-Atum in Heliopolis in Egypt.
Atum represented the morning sun and Ra represented the evening sun.

The Roman Temple of ‘Jupiter Heliopolitanus’ is the largest of the three Temples, and is the largest building ever constructed by the Romans.
It was started under Augustus and completed in c.60 CE.
The Podium of the Roman Temple of Jupiter contains three Trilithon Stones, weighing more than 750 tons each. These are the largest stones ever quarried and moved in the Roman Empire.
The Sanctuary was lined with 104 Granite columns imported from Aswan, Egypt. The Temple had another 50 columns, each 62 feet (19m) high.

Commissioned by Antoninus Pius circa 150 CE, it is larger than the Parthenon in Athens.
The Temple is 216 ft (66m) long by 114 ft (35m) wide, and is 101 ft (31m) high.
It is one of the best Roman Temples that still remain intact, as it was preserved by the rubble of the fallen Temple of Jupiter.
The Temple has 42 Corinthian columns, each 62 feet (19m) high, of which 19 are still standing.

Built at the beginning of the third century CE, it was a circular Building with a square entrance, built on a horseshoe shaped platform.
It is assumed that the Temple was dedicated to Venus, because the exterior five niches are decorated with ornaments of seashells and doves, which were the symbols of this Goddess.

Lying in a nearby quarry are 3 more Monoliths, each weighing between 1,000-1,650 tons, that were destined for the same Temple, but never moved from the quarry. They are the largest stones ever to be quarried in Antiquity.

The quarry for the stones was above the Temple complex, so that the stones could be rolled downhill to the Site.
No record of the Temple construction exists.
However, Vitruvius in his work De Architectura, cited two examples of how to move stone blocks:
1. For a cylindrical column
  - A bolt was inserted into the centre of each end, and each was attached to a shaft. Oxen could then be hooked up to the two shafts with chains and harnesses, and the Trilithon would rotate like a wheel.
2. For a square Trilithon
  - The ends were encased in a wooden wheel. Again, a bolt was inserted into the centre of each end and attached to a shaft. Oxen then hauled the Trilithon which rolled behind them.

Baalbeck Roman Ruins, Baalbeck