I’m a sucker for old photos and videos of Beirut and the below two videos I found on medmem.eu are an absolute gem!
The videos are both silent and were taken in 1921 during the French mandate. The first part shows several areas of Beirut like Saint George, Raouche, and The Grand Serail with brief descriptions in between the different scenes. It was quite interesting to learn from that part that a french aviation line used to connect Lebanon to Europe back then through seaplanes.
On the other hand, the second part focuses on education institutions at that time with scenes showing USJ univerity and Hotel Dieu hospital among others institutes. Towards the end of it you can also see the Patriarch during that time Elias Peter Hoayek sitting between some officials at College du Sacre-Coeur.
