Private Sidon, Tyre & Maghdouche Tour | Local Tyre Guide Included

Your driver meets the group at your Beirut hotel and heads south along the Mediterranean coastal highway toward Sidon.

A 13th-century Crusader fortress on a small island just off the coast, connected to shore by a narrow stone causeway with open sea on both sides. Phoenician traders were using this harbour 3,000 years before the Crusaders built here. Your driver covers the full layered history from the castle ramparts — Phoenician port to Crusader fortress to Mamluk conquest — at your own pace.

Stone-vaulted alleyways where spice merchants, goldsmiths, and artisan workshops have traded continuously for centuries — not curated, not renovated, just functioning exactly as it always has. Your driver navigates with local knowledge and points out what makes Sidon's market different from every other souk in Lebanon.

Sidon has been producing olive oil soap for over a thousand years — and this museum, the only one of its kind anywhere in the world, tells the complete story from olive grove to finished bar. Housed in a beautifully restored khan in the old city. A stop that most travelers did not know they wanted until they are inside it.

A 17th-century caravanserai built by Emir Fakhreddine II for European merchants trading along the Silk Road — arcaded courtyards, vaulted galleries, carved stone facades. One of the finest Ottoman buildings in Lebanon and a fitting close to Sidon before heading south.

Arrive in Tyre and meet your expert local guide — someone who has spent years studying this site and who knows its Roman and Phoenician layers at a depth that visiting guides cannot match. Enter through a triumphal arch still standing after two thousand years. Walk a colonnaded street flanked by ancient sarcophagi from the Roman necropolis. Reach the Tyre Hippodrome — one of the largest in the Roman world, built for 20,000 spectators on a 480-metre track, starting gates and turning posts still in place. Your guide places every structure in its full historical context — the kind of visit where you leave knowing what you actually saw.

Fresh Lebanese mezze and seafood at a local Tyre restaurant — Mediterranean right there, ancient city as backdrop. Optional and at your own expense. Your driver recommends the best local spots.

Mantara means "the one who waits" in Arabic. Christian tradition holds that the Virgin Mary waited in a cave on this hilltop while Jesus preached in Sidon below — a place of pilgrimage for two millennia, revered equally by Christians and Muslims. The Basilica stands above the ancient cave. Panoramic views over the southern Lebanese coast. A quiet, unexpected close to a day that covered 5,000 years of history along the way.

5:30–6:30 PM Drop-off at your Beirut hotel. Sidon's Phoenician-to-Ottoman layers, the Roman world of Tyre with a local expert, and the pilgrimage sanctuary of Maghdouché — south Lebanon done properly.