I drove next to this garden for years without once entering it. It’s small and a bit dirty but beautiful. For some reason, both statues in the garden are beheaded (not sure if they were always like that).
The Saint Nicolas Garden is located on Avenue Charles Malek in the Tabaris neighborhood of the Achrafieh District, one of Beirut’s largest districts. The garden that opened in 1964 was designed by the Lebanese architect, Ferdinand Dagher.[1] The area of the garden is 22,000 square metres (240,000 sq ft)[2]. The garden, which faces the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Nicolas, was also named in honor of Saint Nicolas. [Wiki]
I think the municipality of Achrafieh should work on improving the garden and adding few benches. It doesn’t cost much and the street is full of financial institutions and companies that wouldn’t mind throwing a buck or two on a public garden.
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Very nice place indeed, I am sure it is much smaller than 22,000 square meters.
On the other hand there is no Achrafieh municipality the garden is managed by Beirut municipality who is treating all gardens and green spaces like s…t.
By the way did you know that St Nicolas garden has free wifi connectivity?
You are right there’s no such thing as Achrafieh municipality even though it’s quite absurd that Beirut municipality has control over Achrafieh as well.
Didn’t know about the free WIFI connectivity but what’s the use if you can’t sit anywhere in it?
I used to play football with other kids there. How come u can;’t sit? I think there are benches
oddly enough, the romans used to swap heads on statues, rather and chisel a new statue for a new public figure or person of significance – they used to remove the head, chisel a new head, and put it on the body of another statue – or so I’ve read!
Achrafieh is part of Beirut; so why should it have it’s own municipality?
Achrafieh is bigger than many major cities in Lebanon who have their own municipalities. You can’t just have one municipality for all of Beirut because they will end up taking care of DT and ignoring the rest like what’s happening now.
But Achrafieh is not it’s own city; it’s a district of Beirut just like Msaitbeh etc.
Even in elections, Achrafieh and its surrounding are counted as a separate area. You can’t have one municipality in Beirut or at least you can’t have a centralized one.
There are around 2 million people living there, which is slightly 50% of the Lebanese population.
Regardless of municipality and individual areas and what not, It’s nice to see Beirut still has some greenery in and around the city 🙂
There are benches all over the place and you can clearly see them in the pictures!