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

Arrive at one of the most magnificent palaces in the Arab world — built over three decades by Emir Bashir II, the powerful ruler who unified Lebanon's fractured communities under a single authority in the early 19th century. Three grand interconnected courtyards decorated with hand-cut geometric tilework, intricately carved cedar-wood ceilings, and elaborately painted reception halls reveal the extraordinary ambition and craftsmanship of this mountain retreat. Beneath the palace, an underground museum houses Lebanon's finest collection of Byzantine mosaics — floor panels of extraordinary colour recovered from archaeological sites across the country. Your guide brings Emir Bashir's remarkable story to life within these walls.

Drive down to Deir el Qamar — meaning "Monastery of the Moon" — one of the most enchanting and best-preserved villages in Lebanon, the country's first capital under the Ma'an dynasty. The central square is framed by honey-stone mansions dating to the 17th and 18th centuries, a Druze palace, and public buildings that speak to the village's former political and commercial importance. A mosque and a church within steps of each other tell the quiet story of Lebanese coexistence at its most harmonious.

A quick visit to the 17th-century mosque built by Fakhreddine II — the visionary Druze emir considered one of the founding fathers of modern Lebanon — before stepping up to the hilltop Maronite church with sweeping views over the Chouf valleys below. Two places of worship, metres apart, sharing the same hillside — a moment that captures the essential spirit of Deir el Qamar.

Lunch in Deir el Qamar — optional Before descending to the coast, an optional lunch at one of Deir el Qamar's mountain restaurants — stone-vaulted dining rooms serving generous mezze spreads with Chouf valley views. A perfect mountain pause before the coastal finale.

Arrive in Sidon — one of the oldest cities in the world — and begin at its most iconic landmark. The 13th-century Crusader sea castle sits on a small island just off the coast, connected to the shore by a narrow stone causeway, its towers rising directly from the Mediterranean. As you walk through its vaulted halls, your guide recounts the dramatic history of Crusader occupation, Mamluk sieges, and the Phoenician harbour that once made Sidon one of the most powerful trading cities of the ancient world. The sea views from the ramparts are among the finest on the Lebanese coast.

Step into one of Lebanon's most authentically preserved traditional markets — narrow stone-vaulted alleyways where spice merchants, goldsmiths, and artisan workshops have occupied the same spaces for centuries. Unlike the restored souks of Beirut, Sidon's old market is the real, living, breathing thing — a genuine window into Levantine commercial life that has changed very little since the Ottoman era.

Visit the world's only museum dedicated to the ancient art of olive oil soap-making — a Sidonian craft practiced continuously for over a thousand years. Housed in a beautifully restored khan within the old city, the museum traces the full journey from olive grove to finished soap cake, with exhibits showing the traditional pressing, cooking, and cutting methods that made Sidon's soap famous across the Mediterranean world and as far as Europe.

End your time in Sidon at the grand 17th-century caravanserai commissioned by Emir Fakhreddine II to accommodate European merchants trading along the Silk Road. Wide arcaded courtyards, elegant vaulted galleries, and carved stone facades make Khan el Franj one of the finest pieces of Ottoman-era architecture in Lebanon — and a fitting final image of a city that has been at the crossroads of Mediterranean trade for three thousand years.

Return to Beirut — approx. 5:30–6:00 PM North along the coastal highway back to Beirut with drop-off at your hotel — completing a day that moved from mountain palace to Ottoman village to ancient coastal city, entirely at your own pace.