In Lebanon in 2013, all of these strategies are present. In 1994, two years after the end of the Civil War, former president Rafik Hariri founded the real estate group Solidere and commissioned the restructuring of all of central Beirut. It was a globally unique case of a private company being permitted to overtake a project of this sort. Countless high-rises were erected with luxurious hotels, predominantly frequented by guests from the Arabian Gulf wishing to enjoy Beirut‘s open, Western ambience. Between the hotels stand the enormous ruins of the Holiday Inn, which played a central role in the notorious battle for Beirut‘s hotel district at the beginning of the Civil War. Old and new, revived, bombed or in waste – all of these categories brush elbows in central Beirut and are occasionally indistinguishable from one another in a city that has been subject to regular bomb attacks, even since the end of the Civil War. The bomb that killed Rafik Hariri on the 15th of February 2005 detonated directly in front of the hotel complex, leaving behind more contemporary traces of destruction.