Anjar

UNESCO World Heritage Site in Lebanon: 8th-century Umayyad ruins in an Armenian diaspora town in the Bekaa Valley.

Anjar is a small town in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border whose population consists almost entirely of Armenian descendants – families who settled here following the Armenian Genocide. Adjacent to the town lie the ruins of an early Islamic Umayyad settlement from the 8th century, recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. The excavated area reveals one of the few surviving planned urban layouts from the Umayyad period: palaces, a mosque, a hammam, and a street grid following the tradition of the Roman castrum. The combination of living Armenian diaspora culture and an early Islamic archaeological site makes Anjar an unusual destination in the Middle East.