Krak des Chevaliers

The crusader castle T. E. Lawrence called the finest in the world. Two rings of walls on a hill above the Homs Gap.

The Knights Hospitaller held the Krak for over a century and built it to be unbeatable: an outer wall, a sloping glacis, an inner fortress with a chapel, a great hall and storerooms for five years of siege. It fell to a forged letter, not to an assault.

The castle sits above the Homs Gap, the only easy pass between the coast and the interior, which is why everyone from the Egyptians to the French wanted it. From the towers you see the Lebanese mountains on a clear day.

Give it a morning. Then drive down into the Wadi al-Nasara for lunch in one of the Christian villages, or on to the coast at Tartus in under an hour.