The Minister of Culture, Wissam Mortada is said to have initiated the procedures necessary for the acquisition of two symbolic goods in Zokat el Blatt, the house of the poet Béchara Abdallah al Khoury, alias al-Akhtal as-Saghir, and the house where resided during his childhood, the Lebanese diva Feirouz, in order to ensure its conservation.

The Palace of the poet Béchara el Khoury, born in Ehmej in 1885 and died on July 31, 1968 – not to be confused with the former president of the republic or the composer – was built around the 1870s, during the Ottoman period of what would become the land of cedars. If some sources indicate that it would belong to the family of the poet who is now abroad, according to others, the building is already in the hands of the municipality of Beirut. It was until now occupied by a carpenter.

As a reminder, many controversies preceded the file of the childhood home of Feyrouz, icon of the golden age of Lebanon, threatened by real estate developers and that activists asked to be transformed into a museum. As early as 2010, the Directorate General of Antiquities had classified lots 565 and 567, estimating that the 2 properties constituting the house of Feyrouz constituted a single architectural unit dated from the end of the 19th century, therefore from the end of the Ottoman Empire.

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