In the 15 years before the long civil war of 1975, rulers, billionaires and protagonists of international fame passed. Brigitte Bardot, Omar Sharif, Marlon Brando, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, to name a few movie stars who loved this hotel, where King Hussein of Jordan and the Shah of Persia also stayed
If there was a symbol of Beirut in the 1970s, that paradise of peace, well-being, prosperity, beauty and fun that had given it the reputation of the “Arab Monte Carlos” and the “Paris of the Middle East,” it would probably be Saint -George: the 90-year-old modernist-style hotel overlooking the bay of the same name where the Beirut River flows and where, according to legend, St. George killed the dragon and then washed his hands in the water, and therefore had miraculous powers. From there, in the 15 years before the long civil war of 1975, rulers, billionaires and protagonists of international fame passed. Brigitte Bardot, Omar Sharif, Marlon Brando, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, to name a few movie stars who loved this hotel, where King Hussein of Jordan and the Shah of Persia also stayed.
And who knows, maybe they might have run into a Cold War spy, or anyone on the run from the law, looking for discretion. Also a guest at the hotel, it is said, was a very young Osama bin Laden, who before fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan alongside the Mujahideen and studying attacks on the Twin Towers with al-Qaeda, enjoyed the Lebanese high life thanks to wealth. significantly of father Muhammad.
A regular visitor to Saint-George and the night life of the capital, was the financier Felice Riva, known as Felicino and at that time much more famous than Marcello Dell’Utri, who not far from here and many years later there was a brief period on the run, which ended with his arrest by Lebanese intelligence at the InterContinental Phenicia, a five-star hotel overlooking the tourist port. In this sense, Felicino did better: the son of the entrepreneur Giulio Riva and orphaned at the age of 25, he inherited the Vallesusa cotton factory, 30 factories and 18 thousand employees, while also managing to fulfill his dream of becoming president of Milan. But when, as the protagonist of the jet set and social news, he found himself responsible for the collapse of his business group, he had to invent a second life and leave Beirut, returning to Italy in 1982.
It was the year of the Sabra Shatila massacre, when the Falangists, in revenge for the assassination of President Bashir Gemayel, massacred an unspecified number of civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites, in two refugee camps near Beirut. At that point, the golden age of Saint-George, like that of the land of the cedars, was long gone.
However in 1963 Lebanon was the fourth most prosperous country in the world after Switzerland, West Germany and the USA, the national lira was one of the strongest currencies, with an exchange rate of 3 to 1 compared to the US dollar, there was a Stock Exchange, the first in the Arab world. Beirut, with its 55 first- and second-class hotels and more than 1,400 restaurants and cafes, was a modern, cosmopolitan and cultured capital. University center in the Middle East with four universities, many national cultural centers, theaters: in the first place that of the brothers Rahabani, Mansour and Assi with his wife Fayrouz, the greatest Lebanese singer of all time. In the 1980s, her song Li Beirut (“For Beirut”) became the moving anthem of Lebanese love for their capital.
When the port explosion brought her to her knees four years ago, she was a symbol of that pain. Today in the streets of the scared and tired city it is time to hear it again.
