Why it looks like this

Beirut grew from an ancient port on a headland into a dense city pressed between the Mediterranean and the mountains. But its most important line is invisible: during the civil war of 1975–1990, the fighting front — the Green Line — ran along the Damascus Road, splitting the city into a mostly Christian east and mostly Muslim west.

The downtown at the old centre was destroyed in the war and rebuilt in the 1990s as a planned district, its restored streets noticeably neater than the dense quarters on either side.