ABSTRACT
This chapter is a journey through the vibrant and fascinating art-based expressions in the city of Beirut, laying as a meaningful presence on the urban environment, strongly permeating its everyday life. In less than twenty years, Solidere completely rebuilt the Beirut Central District (BCD), an area of about 200 hectares, through a massive urban reconstruction program estimated to have cost tens of billions of dollars, involving star architects and leading international firms. A quite ferocious criticism is largely common by Beirutis, both from those generations who lived during the conflict and the new ones, about the reconstruction process after the war. Save Beirut Heritage (SBH), an Non-governmental organization (NGO) committed to preservation of the architectural heritage, declared that the current number of remaining traditional homes and buildings in Beirut is close to 200, while at the beginning of the 1990s, a census counted around 1,600 of them.
