Byblos (Jbeil):

About 37 km north of Beirut, Byblos is claimed to be the oldest continuously inhabited town in the world. Long before Greece and Rome, this ancient town was a powerful, independent city-state with its own kings, culture and flourishing trade. Byblos is literally cluttered with relics of the past. Fallen columns can be found by the roadside and in the harbour, and gold, silver and copper coins of the Graeco Roman period are found throughout the town.

The four main places of interest to visit in Byblos are the castle, built by the Crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Egyptian temples, the earliest of which dates back to the 4th millenium, the Phoenician Royal Necropolis, where King Ahiram's sarcophagus, which bears one of the oldest alphabetic inscriptions yet discovered anywhere in the world, and the Roman amphitheater.