the museum's development were delayed because of the 2006 and 2007 Lebanon conflicts and political instability. The Beit Beirut project was delayed until the return of relative political stability in 2008. The project saw the collaboration between the municipality of Beirut, the City of Paris and the French embassy in Lebanon. In 2009, Lebanese architect Youssef Haider was commissioned by the Beirut municipality to lead the building's restoration works. Even though Haidar had experience in rehabilitation as he had previously worked on the restoration of traditional buildings in downtown Beirut and Tripoli, his selection was contested since he was chosen without having recourse to an open competition. Haidar was assisted by a committee of architects formed by the Municipality of Paris; this committee has worked to develop the rehabilitation project of the museum and is formed by members from a variety of disciplines. Beit Beirut was slated to open in 2013 but didn't open until April 28, 2016; planning and restoration costs amounted to 18 million US dollars. Beit Beirut temporarily re-opened to the public in August 2017, despite lacking staff, services and direction. The troubled opening of the museum was marred by unsettled questions about the contents of the exhibition and its narrative. Description The Barakat building is built in the Ottoman revivalist style with ochre colored Deir el Qamar limestone which gave the building its name. The building consists of two four-story high-end residential blocks in addition to a roof terrace. The two blocks' facades are joined together by an open colonnade adorned with wrought iron work. The blocks are separated by a central atrium connecting to the main entrance to the landscaped garden in the backyard and to the buildings' staircases. The Barakat building stands on Damascus road, where a tramway station once stood. Significance and function During the reconstruction phase that followed the Lebanese civil war, many important buildings were demolished. Activists were able to save a number of individual structures. The Barakat building with its bullet-peppered colonnade and facade became a dominant symbol of the civil war in Beirut. Historians and sociologists have observed that a Lebanese tendency to disremember the civil war and its episodes that don't figure in the Lebanese history curriculum. The last chapter in the Lebanese history textbooks address the withdrawal of French colonial forces from Lebanon in 1946. Lebanese intellectuals and architects lobbying to save the Barakat building argued that