Enjoy the incredible scenery of this mountain village, famous as the hometown of Lebanon’s favorite author and artist, Gibran Khalil Gibran. You can visit Gibran’s former home, now transformed into a museum in his honor. This is the village of Bsharri on the shoulder of the valley of Kadisha. In 1998, UNESCO added the valley to the list of World Heritage Sites because of its importance as the site of some of the earliest Christian monastic settlements in the world, and its continued example of early Christian faith.
The valley is a deep gorge carved by the Kadisha River. Kadisha means "Holy" in Aramaic, and the valley, sometimes called the Holy Valley, has sheltered Christian monastic communities for many centuries.
The sides of the valley are steep cliffs that contain many caves, often at more than 1000m and all difficult of access. The most scenic section of the valley stretches for approximately twenty kilometers between Bsharri and Tourza. It is here also that the Holy River, Nahr Qadisha, flows, its source being in a sacred mountain celebrated in the Scriptures.
The Qadisha Valley’s many natural caves have been used as shelters and for burials back as far as the Palaeolithic period. The Aassi Hauqqa (cave) in particular, near Hawqa, Lebanon, has yielded archaeological items indicating Palaeolithic, Roman, and medieval periods of use.
