When we were researching in Beirut, I approached the architecture theorist Robert Saliba about the problem of public space in Lebanon. Shaking his head, he replied: „Public space? That‘s a Western concept. There is nothing like that here. ‚Public space‘ assumes that people have citizenship – in Lebanon, that‘s completely unheard of.“ Christian Maronites, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Phalanges, Hezbollah, Syrian or Israeli occupiers and not least Palestinian refugees who have been living in Lebanon for two or three generations. It is a society that not only has a history of foreign rule, but is also full of internal contradictions – the interests of different confessional, economic and political groups and family clans. There is no smallest common denominator. It seems impossible to designate a place that would serve the entire public sphere as a place to negotiate their conflicting needs. Martyrs‘ Square in Beirut could have been such a place. In 2005, it served as a meeting place for the Cedar Revolution after the assassination of President Rafik Hariri; protestors there demanded the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. After the Lebanon War of 2006, the Hezbollah erected a sort of „occupy“ camp here to bring down the government. Today, the square is primarily used for parking cars.