Bsous Silk Museum, Silk production museum in Bsous, Lebanon

The Bsous Silk Museum occupies a 2-story stone building and displays traditional silk production with period looms and historical equipment throughout the rooms. The exhibits explain the steps from cocoons to finished thread using original tools and working machinery that visitors can examine.

The building operated as a silk factory from 1901 to 1954 under the Fayad family, then remained closed for decades. George and Alexandra Asseily opened it as a museum in 2000 to preserve and share this local craft heritage with visitors.

The exhibits show how silk making was done in Lebanon with traditional methods, displaying old tools and cocoons that visitors can see throughout the rooms. You can observe how work was organized here and which techniques people passed down through families.

The museum lies about 15 km east of Beirut, in Bsous near Wadi Chahrour. Guided tours take visitors through the stages from hatching silkworms to spinning thread and weaving, with live silkworms on view in the permanent collection. Temporary exhibitions have in the past run for around six months, typically May to October.

The museum keeps live silkworms as part of its permanent collection, so the hatching of the worms and the reeling of thread can be followed through every stage on site. A separate wing holds the treasures of the Antaki family of Aleppo, dated to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.