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Gallery|Arts and Culture

The battle for Beirut’s skyline

Activists struggle to save what remains of Beirut’s architectural heritage.

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Built in the 1930s on a quiet street in east Beirut's Ashrafieh district, Albergo Hotel's original building was only four stories high. When it was converted into a hotel in 1998, it gained another five floors, all built in the same style as the lower ones. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]
By Venetia Rainey
Published On 27 May 2015

Beirut, Lebanon – Following the chaos and destruction of the Lebanese civil war, the battle for Beirut’s skyline has endowed Lebanon’s capital with a schizophrenic urban landscape: modern luxury apartment blocks tower over crumbling Ottoman mansions, cranes pick at construction sites next to overgrown abandoned plots of land. 

Civil activists have long lamented the government’s lack of concern over preserving Beirut’s architectural heritage, accusing it of prioritising lucrative real estate deals over the more expensive task of conserving the remaining Ottoman and French mandate-era buildings across the city.

The most recent statistic from 2013 showed that 80 percent of the buildings, originally listed as historical landmarks after the war ended in 1990, have since been destroyed. 

Yet calls by NGOs such as Save Beirut Heritage and the Association for the Protection of Lebanese Heritage for the state to spend more money and time on the issue have largely fallen on deaf ears.

Instead, the task of keeping such houses from ruin and demolition has fallen to individuals and non-state actors.

Luckily, many have risen to the task. 

From spaces for performances, art exhibitions, and NGOs, to hotels, cafes and even an academic research institute, Beirut’s enchanting old houses are increasingly being given a new lease on life and new purposes, and as a result, being preserved and opened up for all to enjoy.

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What would have been the central room on the first floor of the house has now been converted into a sumptuously decorated Italian restaurant, Al Dente. The typical layout for such houses, with all other rooms opening onto the space, can still be seen, with the original doorways and cemento-tiled floors renovated and kept in place. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]
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Located in the buzzing east Beirut neighbourhood of Mar Mikhael, BEYt offers guests the chance to stay in a traditional Lebanese building. The shutters on the windows, seen here in the guesthouse's private garden, are French-inspired and typical of the houses built during the French mandate period in the '20s and '30s. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]
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Sat amid the hodge-podge of newer buildings that now line Beirut's seaside Corniche, Dardachat cafe occupies the ground floor of a typical Ottoman-period house, with vaunted arcades as windows and a pointed red roof. It exemplifies the result of unregulated and unplanned development: beautiful old buildings surrounded by high-rises and taken completely out of their context. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]
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Located in the historic but neglected neighbourhood of Zoqaq al-Blat (literally, cobbled or paved alley), the German Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) has turned an Ottoman palace that previously belonged to the Farjallah family into an academic research facility for all things Arabic and Islamic. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]
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The OIB's reception room boasts impressive stain-glass windows, three walls of intricate wooden panelling and an ornate Arabesque ceiling. The Farjallah mansion was once one of hundreds in Zoqaq al-Blat, which sprung up when Beirut became overcrowded in the late 19th century and the city's wealthy built their villas in the surrounding countryside. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]
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Hidden among car dealerships and garages in one of Beirut's suburbs, Sid al-Bouchriyeh, is La Magnanerie, an events venue fashioned out of a 19th century silk factory. The brainchild of Michele Ghanem, whose family acquired the property in the 1970s, it hosts concerts, weddings and festivals, and is the only building of its kind in Greater Beirut. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]
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Although situated in Ashrafieh's enormous Abdallah Bustros Palace, the Metropolitan Art Society is dwarfed by a nearby block of modern flats. The contemporary art gallery, which opened in 2013, features the distinctive three-arch exterior typical of 19th century Ottoman houses. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]
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An unmissable sight for anyone walking along the Corniche of Beirut's western Manara district, the ochre-coloured Rose House was saved from demolition by British artist Tom Young, who was inspired to paint the building and its surroundings. He eventually convinced the developer, who bought the house a few years ago, to allow him to put on art exhibitions, performances and concerts in the iconic house, in an attempt to convince him that it should be preserved and opened up to the public. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]
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Built over several stages between the late 1800s and the 1920s, and empty since the civil war, Villa Paradiso is a work in progress. One of its current owners, architect Remi Feghali has been working on renovating it for years in order to turn it into a public cultural space. Despite not being finished, since spring last year, it has hosted a number of exhibitions and events, including a show last month by the Lebanese Red Cross of archival photographs and footage from the civil war. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]
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Used as a makeshift space for artists to rehearse and perform in the 1990s, Zico House was officially opened by owner Moustapha Yamouth as a first-of-its-kind multipurpose cultural hub in 1999. These days, however, Sanayeh's fabled yellow house, which dates back to 1935, is much quieter than it once was, and instead hosts NGOs, an Arabic language school and the occasional dance class. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]
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The setting for Beirut's Sivananda Yoga Center is the spacious central room of a third-floor flat in a 1930s Art Deco-style building, right in the middle of east Beirut's charming Gemmayzeh area. Its tromp l'oeil walls are a common feature of houses built after the Ottoman period that sought to impersonate the grandeur of its architecture. [Venetia Rainey/Al Jazeera]