Our Lady of Mayfouk Historical Monastery  

The monastery of our Lady of Mayfouk (OLM), located in the heart of the village, occupies a small depression to the north of which flows the river which, passing through wadi Harba, emerges on the Madfoun coast side. The monastery, which some documents date its first constructions back to the year 850, is the result of several additions and repairs. In its current state, it consists of a square volume measuring 45 x 45 m, essentially dating back to the 19th century and which is structured around a central cloister surrounded by porticos on its four sides and whose center is occupied by a century-old cedar. Its three original levels were topped in the 1960s with a U-shaped volume resting on reinforced concrete radiating structures and covered by a double-sloped roof. The main eastern facade includes two portals leading to the cloister as well as to the interior spaces of the monument. The south portal is surmounted by an inscription indicating that this facade of the monastery was built in 1904. Its ornamentation is similar to that of the portals of the princely palaces of Mount Lebanon dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. Located on the same side as this facade, the monastery's reception room, covered by massive edged vaults, is paved with polychrome cemento slabs, arranged in a diamond-shaped radial organization, while the monastery's primitive monovaed chapel occupies the south side of the volume. Attached to the southeast corner of the monastery, a second chapel, built in the 1960s, occupies a rectangular volume measuring 29 x 18 m. Its three-nave basilica plan is punctuated by circular reinforced concrete pillars which support its coffered roof. A small bell tower, placed in front of its north facade, bears a bell decorated with a cross and some floral motifs. The inscription it bears is dated 1876, making it one of the oldest bells in the region. Facing the monastery on the eastern side, the small medieval chapel of Sainte Moura has the traditional parallelepiped shape of rural churches in the Lebanese mountains. Mononaved, its internal space ends on the eastern side with a flat-bottomed apse into which a stepped altar is embedded.

• Route : Circuit Mayfouk pilgrimage
• Village : Mayfouk