Tripoli, Trablous, is Lebanon second city with around 500,000 people, 85 km north of Beirut. It has been poor, politically marginalised and occasionally violent, which has kept visitors away and also kept its old city intact. It holds the largest ensemble of Mamluk architecture outside Cairo: some sixty monuments from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The citadel
The Citadel of Raymond de Saint-Gilles was begun by the crusader count of Toulouse in 1103 during a siege that lasted seven years, and was rebuilt repeatedly by Mamluks and Ottomans. It dominates the old city from a hill and the walk up through the neighbourhood is part of the experience.
The old city
Below the citadel is a working medieval quarter: the Great Mosque built on a crusader cathedral, the Taynal mosque with reused Roman columns, madrasas with carved honeycomb portals, hammams and a series of khans. Khan al-Saboun still makes olive oil soap by hand; Khan al-Khayyatin, the tailors khan, is a long vaulted arcade from the fourteenth century. The souks are for residents, which is exactly why they are worth walking.
Sweets
Tripoli is the pastry capital of Lebanon and this is not a marketing claim. Abdul Rahman Hallab, founded in 1881, occupies a large building near the river and produces baklava, halawet el-jibn and knafeh at a standard people drive from Beirut for. Buy by weight.
El Mina and the islands
The port district has a corniche, fish restaurants and departures for the Palm Islands Nature Reserve, three small islands 5 km offshore that are a nesting site for loggerhead turtles and monk seals and are open to visitors only from July to September.
The fairground
On the southern edge of the city stands the Rachid Karami International Fair, designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1962 and abandoned unfinished when the civil war began. Fifteen concrete structures sit in a vast park in various states of decay; it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in danger in 2023. Access varies and is worth arranging in advance.
Practicalities
Buses run frequently from Beirut and take about ninety minutes. Tripoli is conservative and modest dress is appropriate. Check the current situation before going, as the city has seen unrest in the past, but it is normally calm and people are conspicuously welcoming to the few visitors who arrive.