Students: Tom Dowdall, Thomas Summermatter
Location: Beirut
Date: October, 2009
Type: Research project, student work

Background
When the Romans came to Beirut (Berytus) during the third Macedonian War in 167 B.C. the city of Beirut had already existed for several centuries, if not millennia. Earliest settlements date back to the period of the early bronze age, approximately 3000 BC and several documents hint to vital trading activities with Egypt around the second millennium B.C. Subsequently, the city developed under the influence of the Phoenicians, Alexander the Great and the Seleucids until the Romans gained influence in the region starting in the second and first century BC. Beirut was made a Roman colony by Augustus (63 BC to 14 AD). Herod the Great, king of Judaea, and his successors sponsored several public buildings such as market places, a basilica, baths, an amphitheater and a hippodrome. Together with the city walls, Beirut became a flourishing trading hub for the eastern Mediterranean. In chronicles of the sixth century AD it was described as “most handsome Berytus, the jewel of Phoenicia.” After Beirut experienced a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 551 AD, the city was neglected for several decades, but gained prominence again during Arab rule. In the following centuries, various rulers and empires governed the city and its hinterland, amongst them the Mamluks, Egyptians, Crusaders and obviously the Ottomans, each leaving their own imprint and building activity in the city fabric.

Themes
Beirut seems to be a paradigm of a city where layers of history literally exist on top of each other. The location of the main anchor points of the city dates back to Phoenician or even Canaanite times. Some of the main elements of the Roman city are still present in the urban fabric, most prominent being the Roman baths, located just below the Ottoman ‘Grand Serail’, next to French Mandate buildings and houses from the pre-war independence era, gathering 2000 years of urbanism within few meters of each other. But the city’s history and issues of preservation have also become politicized: Which ‘style’ does the city remember? What buildings are razed to the ground, and which are reconstructed? How does the city deal with its architectural and urban heritage?

Project
Does Beirut over time follow a strategy of ‘urban palimpsest’? Did later periods literally use the previous phases of city building? Does  the city also exhibit qualities of a puzzle, where historical periods are consciously placed next to each other? What is the urban idea of the ‘Phoenician City’, the ‘Roman City’, or the ‘Ottoman City’? Can they be identified in their imprint in the contemporary city? How are these ideas preserved, either physically, or reduced to mediated images of themselves? Is there a politics of urban history?