A clear cultural focus for deciding whether to travel to Chtaura is the collection at the Emile Hannouche Museum. It comprises more than 900 Lebanese paintings and unique works of Melkite art. This brings together an extensive collection of Lebanese painting with a clearly defined art-historical theme. If you would like to take cultural interests into account when choosing where to stay, this gives you a specific starting point.
Art in Chtaura
The Emile Hannouche Museum opened in Chtaura on September 22, 2017. Its collection has a clear focus: Lebanese paintings and works of Melkite art. This gives the museum a distinct character compared with a general art collection. For planning your trip, this leads to a simple question: Is this theme a reason to include Chtaura in your selection?
If you would like to include the museum in your plans, check the visiting options for your travel dates in advance. This lets you consider your cultural interests separately from the practical arrangements.
Bekaa: Other Cultural and Landscape Themes
The wider Bekaa travel destination offers other themes alongside the art collection in Chtaura. They provide different perspectives, such as historical urban planning, cultural history, and landscape. Anjar is considered an outstanding example of urban planning under the Umayyad Caliphate in the 8th century. The excavated fortified city covers a rectangular area measuring 385 by 350 meters. Walls with forty flanking towers surrounded the site.
Anjar’s internal layout can also be understood through specific features: a main axis runs from north to south, and a secondary axis runs from east to west. Together, they divide the city into four equal quarters. The Caliph’s great palace and the mosque are in the southeastern quarter, on the highest part of the site. Anjar thus focuses on the spatial organization of a city, while the Emile Hannouche Museum offers an entry point to painting and Melkite art through its collection.
The Festival of the Vine has traditionally been held in Zahlé every September. Daily concerts, plays, readings, and art exhibitions take place over several weeks. The city’s cultural history also includes the fact that fifty poets and writers were born there in the last century. If the festival dates are important to your trip, check the dates for the relevant edition.
A landscape that offers a contrast to these cultural themes is the Aammiq Swamp. It lies at an elevation of about 865 meters on the western side of the central Bekaa Valley, at the foot of the eastern slopes of the Barouk Mountains. Its elevation and location between the valley and mountain slopes give this place a different spatial character from the historic urban sites or the art collection. This lets you decide whether you are more interested in art, urban planning, cultural history, or landscape in the Bekaa.
This gives you two levels to consider when deciding on the focus of your trip: the museum’s specific art theme in Chtaura and other cultural or landscape themes in the wider Bekaa travel destination.
Discover more destinations: Kafrā, Douma, Zahlé, Ḑahr Al Ḩarf, Damour, Jezzîne, Beirut, Beit Al Dine
Back to the main travel overview: Lebanon.
