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بيروت - ساحة الريفولي
Beyrouth - Place Rivoli - c.1960s
Beirut - Rivoli Square

Publisher: ACE - P.O.B. 1215 - Beyrouth - # 6 - True Colors on Kodak Ektachrome

Sent 10/11/1968 - from Beirut, Lebanon to Sofia, Bulgaria.

"EXCLUSIVEMENT AU RIVOLI
يعرض في صالة الريفولي فقط - عاد ليقتل

The Man Who Came to Kill" (known in Spanish as Doc, manos de plata and in Italian as L'uomo dalla pistola d'oro) is a 1965 Spanish-Italian Spaghetti Western directed by Alfonso Balcázar.

Cinema Rivoli building opened in 1953.

The Fate of Cinema Rivoli

The Civil War Front Line (1975–1990):
When the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975, downtown Beirut and Martyrs' Square were instantly transformed into the heavily contested "Green Line" separating East and West Beirut. The lively entertainment hub fell completely silent. Cinema Rivoli was abandoned, serving as an empty concrete shield scarred by years of bullets and crossfire.

Demolition in the 1990s:
Following the end of the war, the real estate company Solidere was tasked with reconstructing the decimated Beirut Central District. In 1994, rather than being preserved or restored, the heavily damaged Rivoli building was officially demolished.

Planners chose to flatten the building to clear the geographic pathway, removing the structural barrier to create a direct, open visual link from Martyrs' Square straight to the Mediterranean Sea and the harbor.

Today, the site where the cinema once stood has been partially excavated as an open archaeological area.

An older Ottoman-era government building (the Petit Serail) existed prior to the cinema's construction.

#софия
#beirut
#liban
#spaghettiwestern
#1960s

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See the work at @menart_fair in Paris on the 22nd of October through @kalimbecharagallery
Mira El-Khalil is a Lebanese artist and art-market professional whose practice explores memory, origin and belonging through the emotional and architectural landscape of Beirut. Since 2019, the war-scarred Holiday Inn Beirut has formed a recurring presence in her work: initially painted as an isolated architectural protagonist and, more recently, absorbed into increasingly intimate landscapes populated by figures, relationships and fragments of everyday life.

Where is Home? — MENART Fair @menart_fair

For Where is Home?, El-Khalil extends this visual language across three paintings that approach home not as a single physical place, but as an accumulation of memory, belief and human attachment. The Holiday Inn resurfaces almost monumentally, adrift in turbulent water: the familiar Beirut landmark is simultaneously an anchor to the city and something unsettled within it, echoing its earlier role in El-Khalil’s practice as an architectural embodiment of origin and fragile belonging. In The Portrait, a solitary, pious woman stands before the sea, her veiled form evoking familiar religious iconography without being confined to a specific sacred identity; here, home becomes interior: a place of faith, inheritance and contemplation. The Lovers offers another possibility altogether: an abundant, almost dreamlike Beirut in which lovers embrace amid water, flowers, birds, boats and fragments of the city. Together, the three works move between place, spirit and intimacy, asking whether home is where we come from, what we believe in, whom we love, or the imagined landscape we create from all three.

Oil on Canvas - Holiday Inn Beirut
@miraelkhalil ©️
Frame by @coin.dart_

#holidayinnbeirut #artfair #beirut #artworld #menart

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“The Bold & The Beautiful” 🌻
Office Edition : Bold ideas. Beautiful surroundings. Creative minds.

LOVE the WORK you do!

BRAND360°

CREATIVE STUDIO I BRANDING I IMAGE BUILDING

Beirut, Lebanon I +961 3 905950
www.brand360sb.com

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A Tribute To The Lebanese Old Ads …
Do you remember them?
#oldads #djmarclb #wegroup #80srendezvs #lebanon

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When greindizer decides to land at 80’s rendez-vs
#djmarclb #wegroup #80srendezvs #summer2026 #lebanon

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There was a time when music asked something of us.

Long before playlists and algorithms, people gathered around gramophones, mesmerized by the miracle of hearing a voice emerge from a spinning disc. It wasn’t just sound; it was an event.

Then came the age of vinyl. The ritual mattered as much as the music itself: choosing a record, admiring the sleeve artwork, reading every line of the liner notes, carefully lowering the needle and hearing that familiar crackle before the first note filled the room.

And then there were the record shops.

We spent hours wandering through their aisles, searching for that elusive album, discovering artists by chance, debating releases with strangers and carrying home our latest finds like treasured possessions. Tower Records in the United States, HMV in London, and in Lebanon, places such as Disco Floyd, La Maison du Disque and Top 10 became destinations for music lovers. Thankfully, Disc Jockey still keeps part of that tradition alive.

The cassette followed, carrying our favourite songs in glove compartments and jacket pockets. We made mixtapes for road trips, for heartbreaks, for people we loved. Sometimes the tape tangled, and we patiently rescued it with a pencil.

CDs promised perfection and convenience. Towers of albums lined our shelves, and skipping tracks with the touch of a button felt revolutionary.

Today, millions of songs live invisibly inside our phones. Music has never been more accessible. Yet somewhere along the way, we lost part of the experience: the anticipation, the artwork, the tactile rituals, the conversations in record stores, the feeling of truly living with an album rather than simply consuming a song.

Perhaps old music wasn’t better.

But the way we listened to it was.

And maybe that’s what we miss most.

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To most Lebanese, it was Bineyet Shams.

Designed by the renowned Lebanese architect Joseph Philippe Karam in 1957, its colorful façade, floating V-shaped concrete columns, and view over the Pigeon Rocks made it one of Beirut’s architectural icons.

To me, it was home.

We moved there in the late 1970s after escaping the fighting between Shiyah and Ain El Remmaneh in the early years of the civil war. My father took three floors, turning them into our home and the newsroom of his newspaper.

That’s where I learned to read, to write, and to survive.

Shops buried its architecture.
Greed erased its soul.

The war failed to destroy it.
Chaos did.

Thanks to @purenostalgia for bringing back this memory.

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Few figures left as deep a mark on Lebanon’s tourism scene as Youssef Gergi Abed, better known as Pépé Abed.

Yet it is in Byblos that his legacy remains most vivid. Few places capture that story better than the Fishing Club overlooking the old harbour, where his presence is still deeply felt.

Born in Rmeil in 1911, Abed spent part of his youth in Mexico before returning to Lebanon, where he would go on to become one of the country’s most colorful entrepreneurs. A jeweler by trade, he was also an avid diver, adventurer and visionary whose passion for the sea helped shape some of Lebanon’s most beloved leisure destinations.

From Acapulco Beach Club in Jnah to the Bacchus Hotel and nightclub in Beirut, the Admiral’s Club in Tyre and Hacienda in Amshit, Pépé Abed helped define an era when Lebanon was emerging as one of the Mediterranean’s premier destinations.

In 1962, he established the Byblos Fishing Club within the ancient Phoenician harbour, transforming a simple fishermen’s setting into one of Lebanon’s most iconic seaside restaurants. Overlooking the Mediterranean, it became renowned not only for its seafood and sunsets, but also for Pépé himself. His warmth, charisma and larger-than-life personality drew visitors from around the world, many of whom left their mark on the restaurant’s celebrated Wall of Fame.

A passionate amateur diver, he also explored the waters off Byblos for years. The artifacts he recovered inspired the opening of the Pépé Abed Museum beside the Fishing Club, reflecting his fascination with Lebanon’s maritime heritage and the civilizations that once flourished along its shores.

When Pépé Abed passed away in December 2006, Lebanon lost one of the pioneers of its hospitality industry. But in the ancient harbour of Byblos, where fishing boats still sway gently on the water and visitors gather around tables
overlooking the sea, his legacy continues to live on.

Thank you @omars.harb for the archival photos.

@byblosfishingclub

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This Sunday at 7:00 PM on SHFT

On The Beirut Narrative, Imad Kozem explores the intersection of design, memory, and emotion, where structure becomes more than form and turns into feeling. Through his book on nostalgia, he reflects on how spaces can carry echoes of the past while still shaping the future.

A conversation about architecture, remembrance, and the emotional layers hidden within design.

Available on @cablevisionlb and CV+

#SHFT #TheBeirutNarrative #NowOnSHFT #ImadKozah #Architecture

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The 1950s and 1960s saw a flood of architectural creativity across Beirut. Streamline Moderne, Art Deco, and early modernist residential and commercial buildings quickly reshaped the Lebanese capital and took Beirut by storm. From Immeuble de l’Union in Sanayeh, to the ABC building in Hamra, to the Samakiyeh building in Verdun, Beirut became wrapped in a remarkable modernist landscape that reflected a city embracing elegance, progress, and a new urban identity.

Another beautiful example from that era is the Yared Building, designed in the early 1950s by the legendary architect Zareh Baghdassarian.

With its rounded corner façade, horizontal lines, curved ribbon windows, and soft geometric composition, the building carries many of the defining traits of Beirut’s late Streamline Moderne movement as architecture gradually shifted toward a cleaner and more restrained modernism.

Its curved elevations almost give it the appearance of an ocean liner placed within the city, a design language that was highly popular in Beirut during the post war years.

Inside, the character of the period still survives beautifully. The lobby retains its marble surfaces, sculptural curved staircase, elegant wrought iron railings, circular ceiling detail, and soft flowing lines that continue throughout the stairwell. Even decades later, the interior still reflects the refined craftsmanship and architectural confidence that once defined Beirut’s golden modernist years.

Today, the building continues to live on as an office space housing various businesses, remaining part of the everyday rhythm of the city while preserving the spirit of another Beirut.

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MONT-LIBAN - DEUX AMOUREUX AVEC UNE SIMCA (1963/1966)

NB : la Simca 1500 une voiture française, bien que son histoire soit marquée par une forte influence italienne.

SIMCA est l'acronyme de Société Industrielle de Mécanique et Carrosserie Automobile, une entreprise fondée en France en 1934 avec des usines à Nanterre puis à Poissy.

Elle a été créée par Henri Théodore Pigozzi, un industriel né à Turin, initialement pour assembler des modèles Fiat sous licence afin d'éviter les taxes d'importation en France.

La Simca 1500 a été dessinée par le styliste italien Mario Revelli de Beaumont.

À son apogée, Simca était le quatrième constructeur français, rivalisant directement avec Renault, Peugeot et Citroën. La marque a disparu en 1980.

#montliban #liban #simca1500 #vintagephotography #archives

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Traveling back in time to another Beirut… when Sanayeh felt like a world suspended between eras. Heritage houses met bold modernist lines in a dialogue that defined the neighborhood, from Immeuble de l’Union to the striking Ministry of Information, home to Radio Liban and the Ministry of Tourism. Just beyond, the Sabbagh Center, the openness of Sanayeh Garden, and the natural flow into Hamra Street… where the city unfolded into one of its most vibrant scenes.

Then the rhythm shifted. The years of war rewrote everything, yet life never stepped aside. Growing up in Ras Beirut, even a drive on a relatively calm day carried its own weight… or a walk alone, headphones on, as Salade du Chef by Marwan Rahbani played like a discocized pulse… turning the streets into a moving sequence between tension and escape. The Najjar Building, the Arida Building with Boutros Gallery and boutiques like Patchwork, and the abandoned Arida Building still held their glow then… intact, present, part of a city that refused to let go of itself.

Today, Sanayeh feels like a distant reel from another time. Some structures hold on, others are slowly returning through restoration, like the residence once linked to Charles de Gaulle. And through it all, Radio Liban continues to broadcast, carrying voices across decades.

What remains is not only what stands… but what lingers. A neighborhood layered with memory, where every street still carries fragments of a Beirut that once moved to its own rhythm… and somehow, still does.

@marwanrahbani

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