A 1938 advert from Phoenicia magazine captures all the romance of the Orient Express: from Paris to Tripoli by train in four and half days, steaming across Europe and the Middle East to Lebanon. It represents a vanished age, a part of history that inspired a group of Tourism students in Zouk Mkayel to write a paper on restoring the Tripoli
station. For now, the Ottoman-commissioned, French-built structure is closed, damaged by Israeli bombing and Syrian occupation, and is collapsing around the rare 1901 locomotive it contains.
The project has taken off, and plans include establishing a museum inside the station to explain and display its memories. Preparations for an exhibition and film in Beirut are currently underway, aiming to promote the campaign’s first step – a petition to the Ministry of Culture to classify the station and its contents as a historical site.

For full article, check out December issue 13.