About the Visit Byblos project

Visit Byblos is a project dedicated to discovering and understanding the city of Byblos.

It combines photography, narrative, and interactive exploration to offer an accessible, structured, and contemporary reading of a territory inhabited for millennia.

scattered Roman column ruins in Byblos illustrating the remains of the ancient city

Another way of moving through the city

Byblos is often approached through its periods, monuments, or historical status.

Visit Byblos proposes another approach: observing the site as a whole, understanding relationships between spaces, and placing each element within a continuity.

The project relies on images, texts, and virtual visits to allow free exploration at several levels of reading.

The aim is not to simplify history, but to make it legible.

A project initiated 10 years ago

Visit Byblos originated in a book produced in 2013 with the support of the city of Byblos.

That first work already combined photography and virtual visits accessible through QR codes, linking a printed support to an immersive digital exploration.

Today the website extends that approach by gathering the material and structuring it in a space accessible to all.

graphic image with the word "Byblos" in bold black letters on an orange background

A tool in development

Visit Byblos is intended to evolve.

The project develops progressively through new content, translations, interactive tools, and distribution formats adapted to different uses.

It can also lead to cultural, editorial, or educational projects connected to the territory and its actors.

The objective is to build, over time, a reference tool for discovering and understanding Byblos.

Supporting the project

Visit Byblos is an independent project built over time.

Its development — content translation, new field reports, interactive tools, exhibitions — relies on limited means.

Different forms of support can help accompany these evolutions, in connection with local institutions, cultural partners, or individual initiatives.

The challenge is to continue the project while preserving both its standards and its accessibility.

A personal anchor

The project is led by Melkan Bassil, photographer.

Originally from Fidar, near Byblos, he maintains a long-standing connection with this territory.

That link is not the center of the project, but it remains one of its starting points.

It forms part of a wider approach centered on observation and transmission of place.

seaside landscape in Fidar near Byblos reflecting the personal roots of the author