BEIRUT: A CITY PALIMPSEST Architecture and Urban Mediterranean Cultures

Reading and mapping the urban fabric through the permanence of its traces is a very important fact that drives us to interpret the complexity of a “ Locus ” 1 and guides us to decode the cityscape in relation to the metamorphosis of its urban components. This article underlines the complex nature of the historical construction process of Beirut city, and points out the characters of its transformation by examining its structure through the historical process of its formation: polymorphic continuity in its multiple fractures caused by the superimposition of different architectural and urban cultures. The palimpsest and the urban continuum “legible” in the metamorphosis of Beirut city are examined in this article as “tools” in order to individualize, through the permanence and persistence of the old urban traces, the geometric alignments and the positioning of monuments; a sort of hidden urban correlations among the various urban components that characterize the city as a phenomenon.