Unable to tour the United States because of an American Federation of Musicians ban and moving through one of the most creative periods of their career, The Kinks accepted engagements in places that now seem unexpected. On 17 May 1969, one of those places was Beirut.
Read it here:
https://www.melkart.net/p/when-the-british-invasion-came-to
The Hope for Peace Monument (Espoir de Paix) in Yarze, near Baabda, is a 30-meter (98 foot) tall, 5,000-ton concrete sculpture created in 1995 by French-American artist Arman. Resembling a bombed-out building, it permanently encases 78 decommissioned military vehicles to symbolize an end to the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War.
Image 1: Wikimedia Commons
Images 2, 3, 4: post_vandalism on Instagram
The Hope for Peace Monument (Espoir de Paix) in Yarze, near Baabda, is a 30-meter (98 foot) tall, 5,000-ton concrete sculpture created in 1995 by French-American artist Arman. Resembling a bombed-out building, it permanently encases 78 decommissioned military vehicles to symbolize an end to the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War.
Image 1: Wikimedia Commons
Images 2, 3, 4: post_vandalism on Instagram
The Hope for Peace Monument (Espoir de Paix) in Yarze, near Baabda, is a 30-meter (98 foot) tall, 5,000-ton concrete sculpture created in 1995 by French-American artist Arman. Resembling a bombed-out building, it permanently encases 78 decommissioned military vehicles to symbolize an end to the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War.
Image 1: Wikimedia Commons
Images 2, 3, 4: post_vandalism on Instagram
Our Lady of Faqra Church was built in 1985, designed by the architect Raoul Verney (1930-2017). It is considered an architectural masterpiece due to its unique design.
The site on which the church is built is essentially a square divided into two sections: one containing an open-air church and a small, covered chapel, and the other containing two cultivated gardens, one with wheat and the other with grapes, symbolizing the Eucharist, namely bread and wine.
The church, with its square shape and construction of natural stone and raw cement, symbolizes the traditional Lebanese church. Its altar, facing east, represents the source from which humanity's salvation comes.
The roofed church has two side entrances beneath the bell tower, leading inside. It is small, accommodating no more than fifty people. Its altar is made of cement and surmounted by an image of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus, above which stands a large wooden cross. In opposite corners, to the right and left, are the baptismal font and the confessional. Above the opposite walls, to the right and left, are artistic wooden panels symbolizing the Stations of the Cross.
On the eastern side, are two joined crosses, so that the shape of the cross can be seen from any direction. Opposite them, on the western side, is a unique concrete dome in the shape of a cube, with a geometric shape at its center — an empty sphere, devoid of the usual bell, to signify a pause.
Images and text by Gaby Reaidy
Our Lady of Faqra Church was built in 1985, designed by the architect Raoul Verney (1930-2017). It is considered an architectural masterpiece due to its unique design.
The site on which the church is built is essentially a square divided into two sections: one containing an open-air church and a small, covered chapel, and the other containing two cultivated gardens, one with wheat and the other with grapes, symbolizing the Eucharist, namely bread and wine.
The church, with its square shape and construction of natural stone and raw cement, symbolizes the traditional Lebanese church. Its altar, facing east, represents the source from which humanity's salvation comes.
The roofed church has two side entrances beneath the bell tower, leading inside. It is small, accommodating no more than fifty people. Its altar is made of cement and surmounted by an image of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus, above which stands a large wooden cross. In opposite corners, to the right and left, are the baptismal font and the confessional. Above the opposite walls, to the right and left, are artistic wooden panels symbolizing the Stations of the Cross.
On the eastern side, are two joined crosses, so that the shape of the cross can be seen from any direction. Opposite them, on the western side, is a unique concrete dome in the shape of a cube, with a geometric shape at its center — an empty sphere, devoid of the usual bell, to signify a pause.
Images and text by Gaby Reaidy
Our Lady of Faqra Church was built in 1985, designed by the architect Raoul Verney (1930-2017).
The site on which the church is built is essentially a square divided into two sections: one containing an open-air church and a small, covered chapel, and the other containing two cultivated gardens, one with wheat and the other with grapes, symbolizing the Eucharist, namely bread and wine.
The church, with its square shape and construction of natural stone and raw cement, symbolizes the traditional Lebanese church. Its altar, facing east, represents the source from which humanity's salvation comes.
The roofed church has two side entrances beneath the bell tower, leading inside. It is small, accommodating no more than fifty people. Its altar is made of cement and surmounted by an image of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus, above which stands a large wooden cross. In opposite corners, to the right and left, are the baptismal font and the confessional. Above the opposite walls, to the right and left, are artistic wooden panels symbolizing the Stations of the Cross.
On the eastern side, are two joined crosses, so that the shape of the cross can be seen from any direction. Opposite them, on the western side, is a unique concrete dome in the shape of a cube, with a geometric shape at its center — an empty sphere, devoid of the usual bell, to signify a pause.
Images and text by Gaby Reaidy.
History is often written by those who pull triggers, but it is made possible by those who provide the means. In the coastal town of Guanabo, Cuba, in the mid-1950s, a Lebanese immigrant named Ángel Chaljup Barquet — known to locals as El Turco (The Turk) — altered the course of the Cuban Revolution.
Perched along the Beirut skyline stands one of the city's most overlooked modernist landmarks — the Ministry of Information and Radio Liban building. Completed in the late 1950s and inaugurated in 1961, it reflects a time when Lebanon believed in progress, culture, and ambition.
Founded in 1938 as Radio al-Sharq and later Mahattat al-Iza'a al-Lubnaniya, the station grew with Siemens' support to seven studios, a recording library, and a transmission station.
Its move to this modernist headquarters marked a new era in Lebanese broadcasting, becoming a beacon of information, music, and culture.
At its heart lies Studio Fairouz, a large studio designed like an amphitheater capable of hosting over 50 musicians. Here, Fairouz created some of her most memorable works. Other studios honor Halim El Roumi and Nasri Chams El Dine.
The Arabic section gave Lebanon legendary voices like Ryad Charara, Gaby Lteif, Souad Karout El Achi, Sonia Beirouty, and unforgettable radio dramas with Abdel Majid Majzoub, Wahid Jalal, and others. The English and French sections also left their mark — Alain Plisson, Yvette Sursock, Nanette Ziadeh, John Bassil, Michelle Defreige.
Through war, silence, and revival, Radio Liban remains a living archive of Lebanon's soul.
Images and text by Lance Aramouny.
The building’s turreted silhouette transforms a conventional glass block into an unexpected urban landmark.
In a classic Peanuts cartoon, Snoopy develops a fear of the dark. Lucy listens, then asks him a simple question:
“Is it dark outside, or in your mind?”
For Lebanon, a country that has endured enough tragedy to justify pessimism and enough resilience to challenge it, that question may be more relevant than ever.
Images © Pygmalion Karatzas
It’s 1963, and you’re walking along the Champs-Élysées with Lebanese pounds in your pocket. Your friend wants to see the Eiffel Tower later, but first you need to exchange money. You look up at the board outside the currency shop: the dollar, the pound sterling, the franc — and there, among the world’s major currencies, the cedar tree of Lebanon. For a country as small as Lebanon, it feels improbable. But by the early 1960s, Beirut had become the financial center of the Arab world, and much of that rise was tied to one institution: Intra Bank.
Read it here:
https://www.melkart.net/p/youssef-beidas-intra-bank-and-fractures
About 40 kilometers north of Beirut lies the coastal city of Batroun, a derelict concrete structure has stood abandoned for 50 years.
A forgotten fragment of Lebanon from before the civil war, the bizarre, brutalist-style building is a familiar sight to beach-goers, though few know it was once to be an aquarium and the main attraction of the Maritime Culture Center.
Designed by architect Nicolas Yazigi, who passed away in 2004, little is left on record about the complex due to his studio burning down, along with most of the blueprints and plans.
Text by Maghie Ghali
Pictures by Danielle Karam
Situated on the length of Avenue Fouad Chehab in Tripoli, this brutalist building dominates its surroundings, perhaps less by its height than by the highly inventive composition of its facades. In order to distinguish a building that was condemned to anonymity by a very sharp triangular site, the designer, Selim Sabouneh, scattered round and oval bays along the flanks of the rectangular cells. The effects of projections and protrusions are multiplied to create an irrefutably brutalist division of the space. In parallel with a more formal trend inspired by Victor Bisharat, following the example of the Obeid Al-Mazru'i Building, built in AbuDhabi in the late 1970s and which presents itself as a simple artistic exercise, the structure of the Tripolitan building is avantgarde and constitutes an eloquent statement of Metabolism and as much of a triumph as the Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo.
Text by Guillaume Excoffier
Picture 1: By Nathan Lopez
Picture 2: Unknown
Printed by Imprimerie Catholique Beyrouth, 1949
Dimensions: 64 × 100 cm
Pierre Bressoud was a prominent French poster artist and graphic designer, active mainly in the mid-20th century. He is renowned for his travel posters that promoted Mediterranean tourism, reflecting the influence of the modernist movement through bold colors and geometric shapes.
Bressoud's "The Lebanese Way" poster is characterized by strong colors, simplified forms, and dynamic compositions, resulting in a visually striking presentation. His talent for capturing the essence of a location with minimalistic yet evocative imagery is a hallmark of his artistic style.
Sheikh Abdallah Al‑Alayli was a Lebanese intellectual, linguist, writer, and thinker whose work had substantial impact on modern Arab cultural thought, linguistic studies, and debates about identity and reform.
Read more below:
https://www.melkart.net/p/sheikh-abdallah-alalayli-a-pioneering
The papacy is often imagined as an institution rooted almost exclusively in Italy and Western Europe. Yet in the early centuries of Christianity, the leadership of the Church in Rome was far more diverse. Several popes came from the eastern Mediterranean, which in antiquity encompassed much of what is today Lebanon, Syria, and southern Turkey.