Museum crossroads, Beirut, Lebanon | Tel: +961 1 426703 | Web Site 

If Lebanon is admired for its seven millennia of history, the Beirut National Museum is at the same time its window and refuge. Built between 1930 and 1937, its collections reflect the extraordinary wealth of an exceptional heritage.  

HISTORY. The heritage, which saw the light of day in 1930 and comprises the first antiquities, was quickly enriched with the numerous excavations carried out since then. Entirely renovated by the National Foundation for Heritage between 1995 and 1999, the Beirut National Museum is a huge edifice where blocks of ochre stone and columns open onto a two-story space of impressive proportions open to the public. [more]

COLLECTIONS. From the first step across the doorway, it’s a journey through the ages that the visitor undertakes. The more you walk along the aptly lit alleys, the more astonished you get. From Prehistory to the Bronze Age, from the Hellenistic period to the Roman period, from the Byzantine period to the Mamluk period, it’s all the incredible diversity of Lebanon’s influences that reaches out for you. Under the charm, one cannot feel more alive when such a heritage is so subtly developed. [more]

VISITS. A visit to the Beirut National Museum, both magical and didactic, begins with one of the master pieces of the collection, the Sarcophagus of Ahiram (10th century. BC). One quickly understands that if this heritage is Lebanese, it, none-theless, addresses humanity for its walls are not less revealing than the Phoenician alphabet, ancestor of modern alphabets. [more]

Step after step, the resounding names seem too familiar, like a common heritage, yet far from revealing all its secrets. Ramses, Alexander, Europe… profusion of glories & legends, the cradle of which became the banks of the Mediterranean. More than ever, the famous expression “Crossroads of Civilizations” takes here all its meaning. [more]

• Special thanks to:
  General Directorate of Antiquities
  National Foundation for Heritage - Museum Committee