The hotel district of Minet-el-Hosn sat adjacent to the Corniche seafront, in the northwestern corner of downtown Beirut. The Holiday Inn, the Phoenicia Inter-Continental, the St. Georges, the Excelsior, the Palm Beach, the Normandy, the Alcazar -- these were not merely hotels but monuments to a national identity built on commerce, cosmopolitanism, and an almost willful optimism about Lebanon's place in the world. Some of the towers had not even been completed when the civil war erupted in April 1975. The unfinished Murr Tower, a skeletal concrete high-rise nearby, would become the most feared sniper nest in the city. By October 1975, as Beirut split along the Green Line into a Christian east and a Muslim west, the hotel district's strategic value became clear. Whoever controlled those towers controlled the sightlines over a wide swath of the city and its approaches from the sea.

The first shots were fired on October 23, 1975. A detachment from the Al-Mourabitoun militia -- the armed wing of the Independent Nasserite Movement, led by Ibrahim Kulaylat -- seized the empty Murr Tower after dislodging its Phalangist defenders. From the upper floors, fighters rained rockets and mortars onto Christian-held neighborhoods below. The fighters called themselves the "Hawks of az-Zeidaniyya." Three days later, the conflict spread into the hotel district proper. Christian Phalangist fighters under William Hawi and Bachir Gemayel took positions in the Holiday Inn and the Phoenicia, while the Tigers Militia of the National Liberal Party moved into the St. Georges. But the Murr Tower loomed over them all, its height giving the Muslim-leftist forces an observation advantage that the Phalangists could never overcome. Small-arms fire from the Rizk Tower and Achrafieh barely scratched the concrete giant.

On October 29, Prime Minister Rachid Karami called a ceasefire to evacuate more than 200 people -- mostly tourists -- trapped inside the Holiday Inn. A motorized Gendarmerie detachment, using armored cars and personnel carriers borrowed from the Lebanese Army, carried out the extraction. But the fighting resumed almost immediately. On December 8 and 9, a savage close-quarters battle raged through the Phoenicia Inter-Continental. Fighters moved floor by floor through hotel rooms designed for business travelers and honeymooners, exchanging fire across lobbies once staffed by concierges. The Phalangists were forced out of the Phoenicia but clung to the Holiday Inn. When the St. Georges fell, the Tigers Militia simply withdrew, leaving the remaining Christian factions to fight alone. The Lebanese Army intervened briefly to retake the Phoenicia, but the larger stalemate held.

By late December, the hotel district was a shattered landscape. Fighting subsided briefly as combatants turned their attention to other fronts -- the Christian militias blockaded the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel al-Zaatar on January 1, 1976, and the Muslim-leftist Lebanese National Movement retaliated with offensives across the city. When fighting returned to the hotels in January, the Phalangists held the Holiday Inn and the LNM held the Phoenicia, with the Murr Tower still in Muslim hands. An accidental artillery barrage struck the campus of the American University of Beirut, killing students who had nothing to do with the war. A Syrian-sponsored ceasefire on January 22 froze positions, and after a final push that was stopped at Rue Allenby on March 31, both sides agreed to a lasting ceasefire on April 2. The Battle of the Hotels was over. Scavengers poured in immediately, stripping the buildings bare.

The bullet-riddled hulk of the Holiday Inn still stands on the Beirut skyline, one of the most recognizable ruins of the civil war. Plans to demolish or rebuild it have circulated for decades without resolution. The Phoenicia was eventually restored and reopened as a luxury hotel. The St. Georges remains partially ruined, its ownership mired in legal disputes connected to the Hariri assassination site next door. Lebanese artist Lamia Ziade created an installation called Hotel's War in 2008, using childlike wool and fabric models to recreate the battle's buildings. Marwan Rechmaoui sculpted a model of the Murr Tower titled Monument for the Living, now displayed at the Tate Modern in London. From the air, the contrast is stark: the rebuilt Corniche glitters beside hollow concrete towers that have not been touched since 1976. The hotels of Beirut's golden age still define the skyline -- not as symbols of prosperity, but as monuments to the speed with which prosperity can be destroyed.