The National Museum of Beirut is the greatest reflection of Lebanon’s seven-thousand-year history. Since the first sight, this place has something impressive.
In order to enter the building, one must pass by the amazing columns that look like the ones of other museums built since 1930, according to the plans of the architects Antoine Nahas and Pierre Leprince Ringuet: both presented their project to the committee in charge of collecting the funds to build this museum. Presided by Bechara el Khoury, then Prime Minister, this committee also launched works that remained until 1937. Between 1995 and 1999, the National Heritage Foundation entirely renewed this magnificent building. On the inside, this two-floor building is open to the public and includes all the historical periods that made Lebanon what it is today: prehistory, Bronze Age, Hellenistic epoch, Roman Period, Byzantium, and Mamlouks…Not to mention the Phoenician testimonies.All those periods and civilizations are illustrated right here with the antiques and relics discovered while digging into the Lebanese coasts or in the surrounding areas of Tyr, Saïda, Beirut, and Baalbek.
A little movie presented to visitors shows how collections were saved during the Lebanese Civil War from 1975 to 1991: in the heart of chaos, the preservation manners allowed us to contemplate all those relics of today.
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