In the eighteenth century, the Voyages de Syrie et du Mont-Liban of Jean de la Roque (1661-1745) was a recognized authority on the history and culture of the Levant. It recounted a journey there between 1688 and 1690, but was published over thirty years later, in 1722. Dedicated to Andre-Hercule de Fleury (1653-1743), future cardinal and tutor to Louis XV, it belonged to a genre of travel narratives, or récits de voyage, which had become popular since the later seventeenth century; their marked ethnographical emphasis involved a conscious reflection on French home culture. For the present volume, the significance of La Roque’s work is the impact of his account of the buildings of Baalbek on the genre of architectural description whose earlier narratives had been dry and inert. The main precursor in France, the antiquarian Jean Poldo d’Albenas’s Discours historial (1560) on the ancient remains of Nimes, was enlivened by virtuoso architectural plates inspired by Italian drawings after the antique, which created a new ‘archaeological vision’ of the built environment, but its written descriptions present a static image of architecture and little direct encounter with the experience of place. By contrast, La Roque’s description of Baalbek is supported by only two visual illustrations, which lack the precision of Poldo’s plates; but his written narrative shows greater attention to the experience of architecture and leads the reader through the remains, introducing a sense of motion to the genre.