"The Walls of Beirut. Topography and urban dynamics of a Levantine
city from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman Period"
Patricia Antaki (University of Balamand)
15th February 2023
16.00 CET (Rome, Paris, Berlin / GMT+2)
17.00 (İstanbul, Athens / GMT+3)
10.00 (New York / GMT-4)
The city of Beirut can be regarded, for a multitude of archaeological
missions that have dug its underground searching for its past over the
last decades, as an amazing vast playground - the largest urban
archaeological excavation in the world according to some, with over
300 sites being excavated. The wealth of archaeological data resulting
from the uncovered prolific vestiges along with their associated
material, albeit only a portion of them has been published and
studied, allows us today to endeavour to examine the diachronic
evolution of the city, from its foundation until the nineteenth
century over a period spanning five millennia.
Our investigation addresses each historical period that has left its
imprint on the area, in an attempt to identify each one of the
boundaries of the town as evidenced by features such as ramparts,
moats and entrances as well as the corresponding main urban and
suburban quarters, whether residential, public, religious, industrial,
funerary, defensive, or port ones.
Our research covers the following major occupation layers of Beirut:
the first modest walled Bronze Age settlement of Biruta of the Amarna
and Ugarit letters, the remains of the Phoenician and Persian town
with its extra muros sectors, the large Hellenistic town characterized
by its Hippodamian layout, subsequently overlaid by the impressive
Roman colony of Berytus and in particular its remarkable public
buildings and its nearby cemeteries, itself superseded by the
flourishing Byzantine town brought to an end by the devastating
earthquake of 551, and finally the seemingly abandoned place and its
gradual transformation into a smaller but heavily fortified town in
Medieval times, especially in the Crusader period, with city walls
still standing down to the mid-19th century.
