AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Donna Maria Sursock Gardens is a mountaintop outdoor wedding and events venue in Sofar, in Lebanon's Aley district, set on the rehabilitated esplanade in front of Villa Donna Maria — a fairy-tale Sursock family palace built in 1909. Couples and gala hosts gather here among gardens and terraces with a war-scarred grand villa rising as a dramatic backdrop and views spilling over the Lamartine Valley far below.↗↗↗
What makes the place special is its layering of glamour and loss. The villa was the summer home of one of the richest families of the late Ottoman and Mandate era, lavishly entertaining Beirut's high society every summer until 1975, then looted and wrecked in the civil war. Since 2016 the gardens have been carefully restored and reopened as an event space, and the revenue from weddings now funds the slow, ongoing restoration of the palace itself — so a visit here is both a celebration and an act of heritage revival.↗↗
A Sursock summer palace in the clouds
The villa that gives the gardens their name was built in 1909 by Alfred Sursock as a mountain retreat for his wife, Donna Maria Theresa Serra di Cassano, the daughter of an Italian duke. Perched on a hilltop in Sofar at roughly 1,250–1,300 metres above sea level, it was sited to command the surrounding town, the gorges and villages, and — on clear days — a far glimpse of the Mediterranean. The Sursocks, a Greek Orthodox family of merchants turned aristocrats, made this their primary residence in the Lebanese mountains, a summer counterpart to their grand town house in Beirut.