Beirut

9:00 AM — Departure from Beirut Your professional guide and driver collect you from your Beirut hotel and head southeast into the Chouf Mountains — pine-forested ridges climbing above the coastal plain as you wind upward toward Beiteddine, arriving before the crowds.

Walk through the most magnificent palace in the Chouf Mountains — built by Emir Bashir II between 1788 and 1840 as both a seat of power and a statement of Lebanese cultural ambition. Three grand interconnected courtyards unfold before you, decorated with hand-cut geometric tilework, carved cedar-wood ceilings, and painted reception halls that once hosted Ottoman officials, European diplomats, and the emirs of Lebanon's mountain communities. Beneath the palace, an underground museum preserves Lebanon's finest collection of Byzantine mosaics — floor panels of extraordinary beauty and detail recovered from across the country. The palace today serves as the summer residence of the Lebanese President. Your guide brings Emir Bashir's complex and fascinating story fully to life — his alliances, his exiles, and the legacy he left carved in stone on this Chouf mountainside.