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The dilapidated buildings which dot downtown Beirut are constant reminders of what existed before, what was destroyed during, and what has occurred since the civil war which violently divided the city.
A walk across Clemenceau, from Hamra towards downtown Beirut, is a perfect spring morning walk. A number of mansions and villas from the early to mid century, once considered summer houses away from the city, are now completely immersed in the urban fabric, both it's past and it's future.
Beirut's main train station has been completely wiped out, along with the train tracks linking Europe with Istanbul across Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, all the way to Egypt. New high-rise residential towers cover the empty plots of land, offering wealthy residents exclusive views of the Mediterranean, whilst blocking off the existing view for the rest of the neighbourhood. Many buildings remain remnants of war, abandoned by their original residents and occupied by squatters. The line of hotels and towers overlooking the area dominate the landscape; the extremely short-lived Holiday Inn and the unfinished trade centre Burj Al Murr which served as points of panoptic surveillance during the war, loom large at the top of the hill, while downhill sits the lavish and gracefully refurbished Phoenicia Intercontinental Hotel and the up-and-coming yet politically contested Saint Georges Hotel.
Lines, clichés and memories
Whilst walking anywhere in Beirut, one is forced to (re)imagine the past. The 15-year Civil War which engulfed Beirut broke the city into two sectarian pieces - the Muslim west and the Christian east - with the Damascus road, alternatively known as the city's 'green line', operating as a fluid yet extraordinarily harsh physical divide between the two. The two separate areas of the city have developed over the past fifteen years to become largely self-sufficient; the services on either side of the divide have been duplicated such that osmosis of citizens across the border is unnecessary. Despite a formal and political 'stitching up' of east and west Beirut, after the war ended in 1990, the scar of the green line and its impact on the physical sectarian fabric of the city discretely lingers to this day. Beirut's central district adjacent to the green line, suffered the greatest physical damage during the war, as...