National Museum of Beirut

The National Museum of Beirut (Arabic: متحف بيروت الوطنيّ, Matḥaf Bayrūt al-waṭanī) is the principal museum of archaeology in Lebanon. The collection begun after World War I, and the museum was officially opened in 1942. The museum has collections totaling about 100,000 objects, most of which are antiquities and medieval finds from excavations undertaken by the Directorate General of Antiquities. During the 1975 Lebanese Civil War, the museum stood on the front line that separated the warring factions. The museum's Egyptian Revival building and its collection suffered extensive damage in the war, but most of the artifacts were saved by last-minute preemptive measures. Today, after a major renovation, the National. History Origin 19th century engraving of the Kaiserswerth deaconesses building in Beirut In 1919, a small group of ancient artifacts collected by Raymond Weill, a French officer stationed in Lebanon, was exhibited at a provisional museum in the Kaiserswerth Deaconesses' building in Georges Picot Street, Beirut . Meanwhile, a forerunner of the Archaeological and Fine Arts Service began to assemble items from the region round Beirut. The initial collection was rapidly expanded under successive antiquity directors with the addition of finds from the excavations led by Dr. Georges Contenau at Saida and Ernest Renan at. Architecture Museum interior The museum was designed in a French inspired Egyptian Revival architecture by the architects Antoine Nahas and Pierre Leprince-Ringuet, and built with Lebanese ochre limestone . It comprises a basement, a ground floor, a mezzanine floor and a terrace; the central block is covered by a glass roof, above the mezzanine, giving natural overhead light. The whole site is approximately 5,500 square metres (59,000 sq ft), and the exhibition floor space totals 6,000 square metres (65,000 sq ft). The immediately adjoining museum annexes and administrative offices occupy about 1,000 square metres (11,000.