client/committente: Società Solidère, Beirut

period/periodo: 2011/2013

project/progetto: Giancarlo De Carlo e Associati

The excavations carried out in order to realize a residential compound in Beirut Central District designed on behalf of Solidere, at the foot of the Grand Serail, have unearthed the remains of a cross section that belongs to an ancient roman hippodrome. Even if  for a civilization as ancient as the Lebanese, Byzantine and Roman periods do not represent the golden age, still they are two of the many layers of which the history of this land is rich. For the large number of communities that constitute this society, however, they represents a common ground, and therefore a valuable testimony to preserve and divulge. Hence the idea to turn the internal garden into a wonderful museum, an archaeological garden of rare beauty where the coexistence of  conservation and reconversion of an entire urban block represent a new-found urbanity.