page_title: Temples of the Beqaa Valley
section_title: Historical development
hierarchical_section_title: Temples of the Beqaa Valley / Historical development
caption_attribution_description: English: The Basilica of Constantine at Baalbek, formed over the ruins of the Temple of Venus. From original silver print in book titled: "A Month in Palestine and Syria, April 1891," (author unknown). Original 19th century book in the possession of Kimberly Blaker, New Boston Fine and Rare Books.
context_page_description: The Temples of the Beqaa Valley are a number of shrines and Roman temples that are dispersed around the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon. The most important and famous are those in Roman Heliopolis. A few temples are built on former buildings of the Phoenician & Hellenistic era, but all are considered to be of Roman construction and were started to be abandoned after the fourth century with the fall of the Roman Paganism.
context_section_description: During the early Roman empire the area was chosen to create huge pagan temples of Roman deities, in order to show the "greatness" of the empire of Rome in Phoenicia.
  After the end of the first century CE the territory became jointly controlled by the cities of Damascus, Sidon and Paneas. It is thought that the area was inhabited continuously until the third century CE. Although the sites may have been built on previous layers of architecture, the current temples are predominantly considered to be of Roman construction and were largely abandoned after the fourth century CE during the Byzantine era.
  In the first century the Temples started to be built, using the nearby quarries with famous ""Monoliths". 
  The Temple of Jupiter in Heliopolis (in a complex area called even Sanctuary of Heliopolitan Zeus) was the biggest pagan temple in the classical world. The presence of a huge quarry was one of the reasons for the Roman decision to create a huge "Great Court" of a big pagan temple complex in this mountain site, located at nearly 1100 meters of altitude and on the eastern Borders of the Roman Empire: it took three centuries to create this colossal Roman paganism's temple complex.
  With Constantine the Great Christianity was declared officially the religion of the Roman empire and the pagan Temples started to be neglected. Eusebius records that the Emperor Constantine destroyed a temple of Venus 'on the summit of Mount Lebanon'. Later the Bizantines used some materials from the abandoned Temples.
caption: The Basilica of Constantine in 1891 at Heliopolis, formed over the ruins of the "Temple of Venus"
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