Beirut, Lebanon

Tim Cooke

It’s rarely out of the news for a long time. At various levels, the conflicts of the Middle East frequently spill over into Lebanon, onto its streets and into its politics.

No surprise then that during the relentless and grotesque civil war which ravaged Beirut from 1975 until 1990, the city’s National Museum itself became both a target and a pawn right on the infamous Green Line which divided the city, with the notorious “museum alley” a dangerous flashpoint.

As the civil war began to spill out of control in the battles between Christian and Muslim militias, the perceptive and dedicated curators of this museum took swift and decisive action, rightfully surmising that they would lose access to a building and collections which ultimately could have faced complete destruction.

Without time or resources to move many of the irreplaceable antiquities to safety, they decided to protect them as best they could, building cement bunkers to cover and protect the antiquities and hiding objects in the basement which was then blocked up.

Sure enough, the museum fell victim to one side and then the other, with bullets and rockets fired both at it and from it. The museum building was badly damaged. Many artefacts were destroyed and others blasted apart.

But when the war ended, the curators took back control of the devastated building and began the painstaking task of uncovering and restoring their objects by breaking open the concrete bunkers encasing objects and embarking on an extensive conservation programme.

The video footage from the time – which you can view as part of a visit today – is powerfully moving, as is what has been achieved in the re-presentation of this museum. Huge credit is due to the former chief curator Emir Maurice Chehab who led the original effort to protect the collections, and to the current director Anne-Marie Afeiche, who exudes affinity with the collections and who speaks with such modest authority about what must surely be one of the greatest museum stories of all time.

This is now a very beautiful building, with antiquities bathed in pools of light, shimmering gently amid the ochre limestone which gives the interior such coherence and character.

The Main Hall, National Museum of Beirut

Antiquities bathed in pools of light

The collections are rich and visually-arresting, running from prehistory through the Bronze and Iron Ages to the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods. Examples of objects damaged in the civil war and then repaired are evident in the displays, their part in the recent tumultuous history of Lebanon becoming part of their wider story.

A repaired antiquity on display

The museum was originally opened in 1942

The process of bringing this museum back to life has been going on in phases for more than 20 years now. The latest phase – the re-opening of the basement to the public – was unveiled in 2016. The basement display includes more than 30 Phoenician sarcophagi and other funerary art.

A fabulous and fascinating museum, well-worth a visit it for its ancient collections in their own right and with the additional and astonishing story of its own destruction and revival in more recent times.