Beit El Dine

This palace was started near the end of the 18th century and was built on a place of a Druze hermitage called Beiteddine (House of Faith). It is a place of spectacular beauty and opulence, and legend had it that the architect's hands were cut off to keep it that way. Today, it's the Lebanese President's summer residence.
The 1st picture is the outer courtyard where there were rooms upstairs in the building to the right for visiting dignataries to stay. Downstairs was a stable for their horses. Today the stable is the museum space in the 2nd picture. The surfaces have been finished as a museum, but I still find the architecture interesting.
The 3rd picture is the middle courtyard. The building straight ahead is the main public building where the emir or whoever was in charge over the years had meetings.
The 4th picture is one of the meeting rooms showing the inlaid woodwork that is found throughout all the rooms we were able to visit.
The 5th picture is said to be the main sitter my room of the wife of the emir. They could sit here and keep track of what was happening in the courtyard without being visible to anyone outside.
The last picture fascinates me. There was a complete bath house included with hot, cold and temperate rooms, etc, found in most hammans. This is the ceiling is the hot room. The folks who lived here were not Muslim. So when they built this room during the Ottoman period, they were able to include this forbidden symbol in the design, with the powers that be none the wiser.
The inner courtyard remains closed as private.Read more