Tyre Al-Bass - The Phoenician Necropolis

UNESCO World Heritage Site featuring the largest and best-preserved Roman hippodrome (over 480m long), monumental arch, necropolis with hundreds of sarcophagi, and Roman road. This site (Al-Bass) is separate from the coastal Al-Mina ruins.

What to do there

5 things to do

1. 1 Touch the 2nd-Century Gateway Into Roman Tyre History · Price: low

   This was the gateway to Roman Tyre — 21 meters high, three bays wide, built in the 2nd century CE where every merchant, legionnaire, and senator who entered the city passed beneath this arch. Touch the limestone wall and you'll find traces of original lime plaster still adhering to some stones at The Triumphal Arch, northern end of Al-Bass site — the actual surface that 2nd-century craftsmen smoothed with their own hands. From the ticket booth, walk south along the colonnaded Roman road until the arch appears, then stand directly beneath the central bay and face south toward a 1-kilometer colonnaded street lined with marble sarcophagi.

   Backup: If restoration work blocks access to the arch itself, the view from 50 meters north gives the complete arch-plus-colonnaded-road composition in a single frame.

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2. 2 Find the Unfinished Face on an 1,800-Year-Old Marble Coffin History · Free

   These marble coffins were quarried on Proconnesus — the Turkish island called Marmara — and shipped 2,000 km semi-finished to local Tyrian sculptors. Several have faces that were NEVER finished — blank oval heads where the portrait should be because the customer died before the sculptor could carve their likeness along the Roman colonnaded street running south from the triumphal arch. Touch a sarcophagus lid with a reclining portrait figure and look closely at the face. Count the garland swags on one panel (usually 3 per side) and count the bull heads at each junction — these reference actual sacrifices performed at Roman funerals.

   Backup: Even unfinished sarcophagi without portraits show the garland-and-bull-head pattern. Crouch down to examine the stone at eye level — detail only reveals itself close up.

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3. 3 Locate Tyre's Oldest Graves: 320 Urns, 950 BCE History · Free

   This is where Tyre begins: a cemetery established around 950 BCE on a sandy beach while Tyre was still an island city offshore. For 300 years, Tyrians brought their dead here, cremated them, and placed ashes in one urn, bones in a second, and buried both with two jugs and a drinking cup in the southeastern section of Al-Bass site where Roman cemetery meets the older Phoenician layer. The same burial package appears in all 320 excavated urns across three centuries — unchanged. Touch the sandy soil and count how far you are from where the ancient sea-beach would have been. The people buried here invented the 22-letter alphabet that became every Western script you've ever read.

   Backup: If the Phoenician section is restricted, the Roman layer still physically overlies the same sacred ground — you are standing in the same place regardless.

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4. 4 Walk the 480-Meter Track Where 40,000 Romans Roared Adventure · Free

   480 meters long, 40,000 screaming spectators, built in stone — uniquely, every other Roman hippodrome was brick. The second-largest chariot racing venue in the ancient world; only Constantinople's was bigger at the hippodrome. Walk the full 480 meters from north to south, and at the southern meta (stone turning post), count the distance from the wall — charioteers had to navigate THIS corner at full gallop, seven times per race, with rival horses trying to force them into the wall. Touch the stone seating banks and measure out in your mind what 40,000 people in these banks would have sounded and felt like.

   Backup: If the full track length is inaccessible, the northern starting gate area (carceres) gives an equally powerful perspective — looking south down the full 480-meter straight.

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5. 5 Taste the Wine That Pliny Named in 77 CE Wine · Price: moderate · Optional

   Pliny the Elder named the wines of Tyre specifically in his Naturalis Historia (77 CE) — one of only three Lebanese cities he considered worth citing for posterity. The Phoenicians from this harbor pioneered Mediterranean viticulture 3,000 years ago after the Al-Bass site, walk or drive 15 minutes north to Le Phenicien restaurant by the port. Order a bottle of Lebanese white wine with seafood meze — grilled fresh-caught sea bream, hummus, calamari — and count the years: 4,700 years of civilization at this harbor, and the same vines, the same sea, the same warm evening air. Ask your server which wine comes from the oldest Lebanese producer — the answer is usually Château Ksara, founded 1857 on Phoenician terroir.

   Backup: If Le Phenicien is closed, any waterfront cafe in Tyre serving Lebanese wine delivers the same vista and the same story. The sea hasn't moved. The harbor is still the harbor.

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Insider tips

• Check travel advisories for southern Lebanon before visiting

• Best visited as a day trip from Beirut (83 km south)

• The Tyre Coast Nature Reserve nearby offers pristine beaches