> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://beirutwire.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Beirut’s Lost Cinemas: When Going to the Movies Was a City Ritual - URL: https://beirutwire.com/beiruts-lost-cinemas-when-going-to-the-movies-was-a-city-ritual/ - Published: 2026-09-24T09:25:54.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-24T09:25:54.000Z - Description: Beirut once had cinemas everywhere, from the grand movie palaces surrounding Martyrs’ Square to the dense concentration of theaters that turned Hamra into one of the Arab world’s great cultural districts. - Author: Beirut Wire - Tags: Culture There was a time when going to the cinema in Beirut was not simply entertainment. It was part of the rhythm of the city. Before multiplexes moved into shopping malls and streaming brought films into every home, Beirut’s cinemas were woven into its streets. People went downtown, to Hamra, to Achrafieh and other neighborhoods not just to watch a film, but to meet friends, walk the city, sit in cafés and participate in a shared urban ritual. The story began surprisingly early. Historians disagree over exactly which venue should be considered Beirut’s first cinema, but one of the earliest known spaces was Zahrat Souriya, opened in 1909 in an existing building adapted for screenings. The Chef d’Oeuvre, opened in 1919, is often identified as the first purpose-built cinema hall in the city. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, cinema had become part of modern Beirut. The Empire opened in the 1920s. The Roxy followed in the early 1930s with an Art Deco building near Martyrs’ Square. Other halls such as the Dunia, Cosmographe and Royal appeared around the city center as film became one of Beirut’s most popular forms of mass entertainment. Martyrs’ Square became one of the centers of this new nightlife. Old photographs show enormous cinema signs illuminating the square at night, surrounded by cafés, restaurants, cars and pedestrians. The Empire, Roxy and later Rivoli helped transform the area into an entertainment district long before television became widespread. The cinemas themselves could be architectural statements. The Rivoli, completed around 1950, became one of the landmarks of Martyrs’ Square and regularly appeared in photographs and postcards of Beirut. The Metropole opened nearby in 1949, while the Dunia was regarded as one of the most prestigious cinema halls in the region. Cinema was also becoming a serious business. Nicolas Cattan and Georges Haddad built one of the region’s earliest major cinema networks. By the 1930s, their company operated dozens of theaters across Lebanon and Syria under names such as Empire, Majestic and Royal. Beirut was not simply receiving films years after they appeared elsewhere. By 1954, Empire was screening The Robe in CinemaScope and stereo at roughly the same time as major theaters in New York, London and Paris. Lebanese audiences increasingly expected to see international releases quickly, alongside Egyptian and Arab productions. Then the center of Beirut’s cinema culture began shifting west. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Hamra exploded into one of the Arab world’s most vibrant cultural districts. Cinema Hamra opened in 1958\. Saroulla followed in 1961\. The Piccadilly appeared in the mid-1960s. Strand, Colisée, Edison, Eldorado, Étoile and many others filled the neighborhood. Sources differ on the exact count, but Hamra and its immediate surroundings had well over a dozen cinemas during its peak, with some historical accounts placing the number above 20. That density changed the neighborhood. University students from AUB and nearby institutions mixed with journalists, writers, artists, politicians, tourists and families. Cinemas sat beside cafés, restaurants, record stores and fashion shops. A night out could begin with coffee, continue with a film and end with dinner or conversation long after the screening finished. Hamra became a place where the cinema was part of a much wider cultural ecosystem. The Strand became particularly famous and was among the theaters that helped establish Hamra as a major entertainment center. It screened Doctor Zhivago starring Omar Sharif, while Cinema Hamra’s modern glass façade itself became part of the street’s identity. The Piccadilly blurred the boundary between cinema and theater entirely. Fairuz performed there. Dalida appeared there. Major Arab theatrical productions were staged there. A night at the Piccadilly could mean a film, a concert or a play involving some of the biggest stars in the region. Beirut’s cinema culture also reflected the city’s social divisions. Different theaters developed different audiences. Some were associated with expensive international premieres and Beirut’s wealthier cosmopolitan public. Others specialized in Egyptian or Indian films. Some gradually moved toward cheaper programming as their neighborhoods changed. Going to the movies could even involve family supervision. Accounts of Beirut in the 1950s and 1960s recall conservative households in which a brother might first watch a movie to determine whether it was suitable before his sisters were allowed to attend. Yet that itself shows how central cinema had become. Families debated which films could be watched because going to the movies was already embedded in everyday life. By the 1960s, Beirut could support everything from prestigious premieres to popular neighborhood screenings. And then came the war. When the Lebanese Civil War began in 1975, Beirut’s entertainment geography collapsed along with much of the city itself. Downtown became a battlefield. Cinemas around Martyrs’ Square were damaged, destroyed or abandoned. Hamra initially remained comparatively active, and residents continued attending films during the early years despite deteriorating security. But as fighting spread and the neighborhood’s social life fractured, audiences disappeared and theaters began closing. The destruction of the Beirut City Center left behind perhaps the most famous relic of that era. Its cinema auditorium, completed in the 1960s, survived in a damaged concrete shell now known simply as “The Egg.” The surrounding complex was largely destroyed during the war, but the dome remained, eventually becoming one of Beirut’s most recognizable architectural ruins. Other cinemas survived physically but lost their original purpose. The Piccadilly closed in the 1980s. Saroulla was abandoned during much of the war before eventually reopening in 2005 as Al Madina Theatre. Many others simply disappeared. The end of the war did not bring the old cinema culture back. Beirut rebuilt, but differently. The commercial center shifted. Real estate became more expensive. Cars and shopping malls increasingly shaped how people moved through the city. Standalone movie palaces gradually gave way to multiplexes embedded inside large commercial developments. Empire itself adapted. In 1997, it opened new cinemas at Dunes in Verdun. In 2004, it launched a seven-screen multiplex at ABC Achrafieh with around 1,200 seats. The movies survived. The ritual changed. Going to a film increasingly meant driving to a mall, parking underground, buying a ticket and leaving through the same commercial complex. The older model had been fundamentally urban. A cinema opened directly onto a street. Its illuminated sign became part of the neighborhood. Crowds arriving for one screening mixed with café customers, pedestrians, shoppers and people heading somewhere else entirely. Cinema helped produce street life even for people who never bought a ticket. That is partly why the disappearance of Beirut’s old theaters feels larger than the loss of a few buildings. They belonged to a particular version of the city. Martyrs’ Square once glowed with the names of theaters. Hamra once had cinemas separated by only minutes of walking. A person could choose a movie simply by walking down the street and looking at posters. The theater was not a destination isolated from Beirut. It was Beirut. And traces of that world remain everywhere if you know where to look. The Egg still stands downtown. The old Piccadilly remains in Hamra. The former Saroulla lives on as another cultural venue. Other cinema sites have become restaurants, shops or anonymous buildings whose current occupants give little indication that hundreds of people once gathered there every night. Even Beirut’s old photographs preserve something modern Beirut has largely lost: streets dominated not by bank advertisements or glass towers, but by enormous illuminated movie titles. Cinema once helped Beirut imagine itself as a modern Mediterranean capital. Hollywood films arrived alongside Egyptian musicals and Lebanese productions. Audiences watched Omar Sharif, international stars and emerging Lebanese filmmakers within the same few streets. Georges Nasser even became the first Lebanese director officially represented at the Cannes Film Festival in 1957 with Ila Ayn?, at precisely the moment Beirut’s cinema culture was entering its golden age. The cinemas therefore were not just places where Beirut consumed foreign culture. They were part of an environment in which Lebanon began producing its own. Today, movies are more accessible than they have ever been. Almost any film can be watched instantly from a phone or television. But something about cinema has become less public. Beirut once watched movies together. Hundreds of strangers arrived at the same place, at the same hour, sat in the dark together and then spilled back onto the same streets when the lights came on. For several generations of Beirutis, going to the cinema was not merely a way to see a movie. It was one of the ways the city experienced itself.