Byblos Castle

Byblos Castle is a well-preserved Crusader fortification built in 1103 at the heart of the ancient city of Byblos on Lebanon's Mediterranean coast. The Crusaders called the site Gibelet and established it as the seat of the Lordship of Gibelet, a vassal state of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The compact castle, dominated by a squat square keep, sits directly alongside Phoenician, Roman, and Byzantine ruins — an unusually dense layering of civilizations across several millennia in a single archaeological zone. The site is open to visitors as part of the broader Byblos archaeological park, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.