Spotlight On
Sour (Tyre): Ancient Queen of the Seas

Sour's (Tyre's) list of former rulers and conquerors reads likes a Who's-Who from Antiquity. From King Hiram (980 B.C.), who supplied Lebanese cedars to King Solomon for the building of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem; to the Phoenician Princess Elissa (also known as Dido), who left Sour (Tyre) to found the famous city of Carthage (814 B.C.); to the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, who laid siege to the city for 13 years (500 B.C.); to Alexander the Great, who conquered Sour (Tyre) by building a causeway to connect the island city to the mainland (332 B.C.) – these are only the B.C. period highlights.

In Phoenician times, Sour (Tyre) was famous for its export of richly dyed purple textiles, using a dye extracted from the murex sea snail. Because of its rarity, the color was typically worn by royalty. The Tyrean purple dye was so highly valued that the Greeks named the people living in the city state “Phoenicians,” after the Greek word for “purple.”

With over 5,000 years of history, Sour (Tyre) is a historian and archaeologist's delight. Although there are remnants of Egyptian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Greek, Byzantine, Arab, and Ottoman civilizations in the city, it is the Roman ruins that are most prominent in Sour (Tyre) today. Highlights include the largest Roman hippodrome in the world, an enormous triumphal arch, and an extensive Roman necropolis.

  Archaeological Virtual Tour: Sour (Tyre)

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  Tyre Coast Nature Reserve

• Virtual Tour
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• Classical Tour of the Southern Coastline: Saida to Sour

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