The essay offers a concise history of Martyrs’ Square in Beirut, taken as a spectacle of the political and cultural transformations of the city during the last two centuries. Through a description of the changes in the aesthetics and practices of consumption of the Square, the essay shows how its different outlooks, when read against the grain, reveal which were the most critical intellectual and political discourses in different historical periods. In particular, the essay assesses how Martyrs’ Square is the place where ruling or competing elites have been staging over the last two centuries their different notions of modernity and Lebanese national identity.
Keywords: Lebanese Civil War Sectarianism Urban Reconstruction Tanzimat