[1] This monument to Bacchus is one of the best preserved and grandest Roman temple ruins; its age is unknown, but its fine ornamentation can be dated to the second century CE.

No information was recorded about the site until a 4th-century Greek conquest, by which point the temple would likely have been closed due to the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire.

In the mid-1970's the Lebanese civil war broke out and protections of the site ceased as Al-Biqā became a stronghold for Palestinian and Syrian forces.

The peripheral wall is adorned by a colonnade of forty-two unfluted Corinthian columns with Ionic bases, nineteen of which remain upright.

The columns support a richly carved entablature, which includes an architrave with a three-banded frieze that is decorated with alternating bulls and lions and cornice ornamented with geometric and floral patterns.

The entrance was preserved as late as the 16th century, but the keystone of the lintel had slid 2 ft (1 m) following the 1759 earthquakes; a column of rough masonry was erected in the 1860s or '70s to support it.