Photo by: Tony Hage

Deir El-Kamar, or "Convent of the moon", was known for a long time as "Beit Sapharo" or "House of the moon". The crescent dominating the cross engraved on the old door of Our Lady-of-the Hill church, is not a Muslim symbol but rather a crescent moon to which the city owes its name, as inscribed on a stele from the pagan temple discovered after the earthquake of 1956.

Located in Mount-Lebanon, in the caza of the Chouf, the city was for more than a century the residence of the Maan Emirs who governed Lebanon in the 16th and 17th centuries and made it their capital. They built for their soldiers a palace, the Kharge, which was inhabited in the 18th century by the Chéhab dynasty before Beit ed Dine was built. The inhabitants of Deir El-Kamar, Christians in their majority, still take pride in their glorious past and affirm that this city remains for them "the center of the world."

South oriented above the valley, the small city is organized around a square, the midan, in the center of which flows a fountain of cool water known for its beneficial properties. On the west side of the square, a small mosque with an octagonal minaret, constructed in 1493 by Fakhreddine, is believed to be the oldest in Mount-Lebanon.