Today April 13, marks the 46th anniversary of the beginning of the Lebanese civil war, and the abandoned Holiday Inn Hotel is one of Beirut’s war landmarks. This 26-story building officially opened in 1974 when Beirut’s economy was booming and when Beirut was one of the most visited touristic centers of the Middle East.
The Holiday Inn was functioning perfectly for only a single year until, unfortunately, the Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975. Just months into the civil war, the hotel became part of an epic battle dubbed “the battle of the hotels”. It lasted until March 1976 and mobilized around 25,000 fighters from all sides (Christians on one side and Shiites, Sunni and Palestinians on the other), resulting in more than 1,000 dead, where many of those who died were thrown from the top of the Holiday Inn.
The hotel became a battleground once again after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Since then, the hotel has remained an abandoned building that has suffered countless bullets and explosions, while the ownership is still being fought over until today.
A Lebanese company and a Kuwaiti group both want to own the building and to rebuild it based on their own interests, so disagreement continues.
This hotel remains untouched, abandoned, empty, decades after the war, and remains a reminder to the Lebanese population about the horrors of war.
