An Old Lebanese Passport From 1945

A popular passport vintage collector Instagram account shared a rare passport from the 1945-1948 era on his page. The passport was issued at the Lebanese consulate in Cairo to a Lebanese businessman named Jack Bassili. You could see from the that the passport dates back to Lebanon's independence era and has several vintage stamps on it. What's amazing is this post somehow found its way to the son of Jack Bassili, John Bassili who left…

Tokyo Restaurant – Beirut

I love discovering or reading about old gems in Beirut and I'm surprised I had never heard about Tokyo restaurant until today. In fact, I passed right next to it countless times but for some reason never spotted the sign. Tokyo restaurant was apparently one of Beirut's most popular Japanese restaurants in the 1990s, and if we were to believe some comments, Walid Jumblatt's favorite spot. Source: http://beirutntsc.blogspot.com/2013/10/tokyo-restaurant-beirut.html According to The Beirut Banyan, Tokyo was…
History

A 1930 Railroad Map of Lebanon

2 years ago
Urban Planner & L’Orient LeJour Feature Reporter Mohamed el Chamaa shared this amazing historic map of rail links in Lebanon (via Elena Haddad, The Chain Effect co-founder). As you can see, the rails covered all ...
History

Old Pictures of Beirut From The National Library of France Archives

2 years ago
I stumbled upon today an aerial shot of Beirut’s port taken in 1929 by François Pierre-Alype, found on the National Library of France website. I dug out the website, searched for all the Beirut-related pictures ...
Baladi

Proclamation of the State of Greater Lebanon: Full Text

3 years ago
September 1 marks 100 years since the proclamation of the state of Greater Lebanon. Back in 1920, General Gouraud sat next to Maronite Patriarch Elias Peter Howayek at the porch of the Pine Residence in ...
Music

Old Footage Shows The Beatles Arriving in Beirut

3 years ago
The Beatles never performed in Beirut but they did make a refueling stop at Beirut’s airport back in 1964 on their way to Hong Kong. The trip included several refueling stops and lasted over 24 ...
Baladi

12 Colorized Old Pictures of #Lebanon

4 years ago
LiveLoveBeirut shared today 25+ stunning old photos of Lebanon for the first time. The pictures are colorized, and include areas like Bcharre, Beirut, Nahr el Kalb, Baalbeck and others. I selected my favorite 12 shots, ...
Old Lebanon

Ten Haunting Pictures from Lebanon’s Civil War

4 years ago
I stumbled upon a couple of pictures of the civil war taken by French Photographer Raymond Depardon, and looked up online to see if there are any galleries related to Beirut. There were two; one ...
Old Lebanon

Liza Srour, The Last Remaining Jew in Beirut

4 years ago
Vice recently published an interview with Liza Srour, the last Jew residing in Wadi Bou Jmil in Beirut. I’ve read several articles on this woman and how Beirut’s Jewish quarter evolve from a thriving 100,000-person ...
Automotive

Street Bike Stunts – Beirut 1979

5 years ago
If you’ve ever wondered about the origins of the modern “Zouzou Ebba”, check out this 1979 video shot in Beirut with bikers pulling some crazy stunts. Zero security measures, zero safety and the bikers are ...
Older