Our Lady of Lebanon
— — a white figure with her arms open to the sea.
Not only on a wall.
“A bronze statue painted white, set on a stone tower above the Mediterranean. The hill is Harissa; the bay below is Jounieh. The statue looks south, toward Beirut, with her arms slightly out. Pilgrims climb the spiral around the base and look up. From the seaward side at the right hour, she becomes a small bright shape against the green of the slope. The cable car from the coast still runs. from the studio
Our Lady of Lebanon, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Our Lady of Lebanon is a Marian shrine in Harissa, a hill town in the Keserwan district about 20 kilometres north of Beirut, roughly 650 metres above Jounieh Bay. The shrine is overseen by the Maronite Patriarchate and is among the most visited Christian pilgrimage sites in the Middle East. The bronze statue at its centre was cast in France, painted white, and inaugurated on the hilltop in 1908. A spiral stone staircase wraps the tower beneath the figure. Pilgrims arrive on foot, by road, or by the téléphérique cable car that climbs from the coastal town of Jounieh.
The statue is bronze, painted white, about 8.5 metres tall and weighing roughly 15 tonnes. She stands on a stone tower with a chapel built into its base, and the whole structure was consecrated in 1908. Beside the shrine sits the modern Maronite Basilica of Our Lady of Lebanon, completed in the 1970s, its cedar-and-glass profile echoing the prow of a ship turned upward. The two buildings together make the hilltop legible from kilometres out at sea.
The shrine is open daily without admission charge, with Mass celebrated several times across the week in Arabic, French, and English. The téléphérique from Jounieh climbs about 600 metres of elevation in roughly nine minutes, opened in 1965 and still the most direct approach for visitors arriving by car along the coastal highway. The principal feast day is the first Sunday of May, when the hill fills with pilgrims from across Lebanon and from the Maronite diaspora.