For 150 years, the Palmyra Hotel in Baalbek never once closed its doors. Even during Lebanon’s vicious, 15-year civil war, the Palmyra stayed open for business. But an Israeli airstrike on 7 November changed all that, blowing out its doors and filling the air with glass.
In its glory days, the Palmyra saw princes, poets, and politicians step into the glow of its lobby. Now it is carpeted with splinters and the air smells of broken pine boards and masonry dust.
The Palmyra is as much a museum as it is a hotel, with classical artefacts taken from the nearby ruins lining its walls. Next to the torso of some long-forgotten consul or legionnaire, the bust of a Roman goddess looks down at the mess.
Zaher Abu Fakhr, the concierge, is busy with his broom. He came to Lebanon from Syria, escaping another war, and has worked at the Palmyra for six months. He was standing by the entrance when the airstrike happened.
“The world went dark, and we felt a pressure wave hitting us from over there,” he points to the shredded window frames of the hotel’s façade. Zaher’s leg was injured in the blast, and his hands are covered in scratches from collecting glass fragments.
There was no warning before the strike, which landed mere metres from the UNESCO-listed Roman temples and hit an Ottoman-era building, reducing it to a pile of limestone. No deaths were reported following the attack, and it is unclear who or what was being targeted.
[Hugo Lautissier]
Echoes of Fairouz
Since 30 October – when Israel sent an order via X for the entire city of Baalbek to evacuate – the area has seen heavy bombardment from Israeli warplanes. According to Bachir Khodr, Baalbek’s governor, 45 people were killed last week in the city alone.
Israel claims it is targeting Hezbollah leaders who are sheltering there. But with this latest attack, there are mounting fears that Lebanon’s cultural heritage, including its ancient jewel in Baalbek, will be irreparably damaged in this war.
In the lobby, Zaher speaks with reverence about the hotel. He lists the men and women of power and fame in the 19th century that stayed in its rooms, all of which have been kept the same, as though waiting for their return.
Rickety coal stoves and art deco mirrors furnish most of them, including the Lebanese singer Fairouz’s favourite room, to which Zaher leads the way with some pride. Fairouz is perhaps as much a symbol of her country as the ruins themselves.
It is why she has been known in Lebanon as the “seventh pillar of Baalbek,” in reference to the row of six Roman columns that stand silhouetted in front of her room.
On her wall, there’s a dedicatory drawing by Jean Cocteau, another of the many celebrated characters whose names fill the hotel’s well-thumbed guestbook. Kaiser Wilhelm II, Nina Simone, T.E. Lawrence, and Albert Einstein are among them.
Headquarters for high politics and showbiz
The hotel has served as a headquarters for both high politics and showbiz. German, Ottoman, French and British troops have all been stationed there.
After the First World War, Lebanon’s modern borders under the French mandate were established at Palmyra, with the Declaration du Grand Liban signed there.
From 1955 onwards, the first year of the Baalbeck International Festival, less khaki and more satin were being worn by the hotel’s guests, as world-famous singers and artists, as well as thousands of tourists, would flock there every summer.
The Palmyra is an icon of the Ottoman era, built in 1874 by an Orthodox Greek businessman from Constantinople. The site he picked lay on a pilgrimage route to Jerusalem, where travellers would often stop to rest, in awe of Baalbek’s Temple of Bacchus and its surrounding Roman ruins.
The road to the Holy Land is no longer passable. An armistice agreement signed between Israel and Lebanon in 1949, after the Arab Israeli war, sealed the border between the two neighbours for good. But the view of the temples is still there, the rows of Corinthian columns framed by the arched windows on the upper floor.
Bachir Khodr has been raising the alarm about the dangers to local protected sites. “The temple of Baalbek is a pride for all Lebanese, not only the inhabitants of Baalbek … It is our pride. It is our cultural heritage. We must protect it at all costs,” he told The New Arab.
He is concerned that despite his country’s diplomatic efforts to protect Lebanon’s heritage, any further UN pronouncements will do little to stop the airstrikes landing near these sites.
“I do not know if it will be enough to protect our historical sites… it is clear the Israelis do not respect anything, they do not even respect the stones, the culture, or the history, as if they were erasing our collective memory,” Bachir said.
Growing calls for protection
On Monday, UNESCO granted “provisional enhanced protection” to 34 cultural sites across Lebanon, providing these with the highest level of immunity against attacks. But for several sites, it is already too late for these measures. In the southern city of Nabatieh, Israeli aircraft have razed the treasured Ottoman-era marketplace to the ground.
The decision by UNESCO will be welcomed in Lebanon after hundreds of academics and cultural professionals appealed for enhanced protection, but it is far from clear whether this will be enough.
Before the airstrike on 7 November, other bombings in the area had already damaged part of a Roman perimeter wall, which forms part of the ruins and is therefore under “enhanced protection” already.
Other historical sites have been hit in Baalbek, too, like the Gouraud Barracks, built during the French mandate and damaged by an Israeli strike the previous week.
The war has so far killed at least 3,365 people in Lebanon, including 216 children, according to the latest figures from the health ministry.
Israel’s air campaign and the fighting in the south continue in earnest. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s drones and rockets are continually fired across the border, though these attacks are on a much smaller scale. With ceasefire talks this week, the hope here is that a truce might be finally within reach.
Back in the Palmyra, the sound of gentle hammering comes from upstairs. A man in a white dust coat stoops at a damaged window frame. Abu Ali has worked at the Palmyra for 56 years, long enough to have seen it as a hub of Lebanon’s golden age, and as the faded relic it has become.
“If my home was hit and destroyed, I wouldn't be as sad as I am now over the hotel… My best years were spent here,” Abu Ali said.
A quick smile appears under his grey moustache before he goes back to work with his hammer, putting the Palmyra back together one nail at a time.
Alex Martin Astley is a freelance journalist based in Beirut, covering conflict, foreign policy, and social justice issues
Follow him on X: @AlexMartin6190