Glitterati return on canvas to decrepit Lebanon hotel
Sofar Grand Hotel was a glamourous hangout before civil war forced it to close down
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Inside an abandoned century-old hotel near Lebanon’s capital, paintings of the Arab world’s once powerful and famous hang around a worn poker table, testimony to its glamourous past before the civil war.
Arab diplomats, French and British officers, but also Egyptian film stars all flocked to the Sofar Grand Hotel before the 1975-1990 conflict forced it to close down. This month, the hotel opened its doors to the public for the first time in decades to exhibit dozens of works celebrating the hotel’s past by British artist Tom Young.
“This place is just full of history,” says the 45-year-old painter, who researched the building’s past for the project. “It was once one of the greatest hotels in the Middle East,” explains the blond artist, who has been living in Lebanon for 10 years.
Built in 1892 under Ottoman rule by Lebanon’s wealthy Sursock family, the forgotten hotel today lies near a disused train station in the village of Sofar some 30km east of Beirut.
On its peeling walls, Young’s paintings evoke a livelier, more cosmopolitan past when high society came to party and secret political meetings took place in the garden.
A painting of late Egyptian actor Omar Sharif — who starred in Doctor Zhivago — appears to show him to be absorbed in a card game.
“We tried to curate the exhibition so that visitors enter and feel that nothing has changed,” says curator Nour Haydar. “In the poker room, there are still cards on the table, the light is on in the kitchen and there are still cups inside,” she says. “We tried to get people to imagine everything that used to happen in this hotel.”