A church and its medieval frescoes
« Beware, this Charbel is not the 19th century Lebanese monk: it is Charbel the Edessian, a priest martyred with his sister Bebaia under Emperor Trajan. The site superimposed the epochs — a Byzantine shrine on a Roman temple, itself built on a Phoenician place of worship — before the present Crusades church. His three-nave basilical plan still keeps ancient columns and pavements. Excavations carried out in 1947 and in the early 1970s revealed, in the apse, frescoes depicting the Dormition of the Virgin and the holy intercessors. A series of seven saints frame a bishop at the tiara, surrounded by Peter, Paul, the four evangelists and the Archangel Michael. These oriental and rigid faces date back to the entire 13th century — four donors appear there, and outside, the tomb of a noble lady recalls the chivalrous past of the place.
