11 August,2020 08:43 AM IST | Beirut | Agencies
A crooked painting hangs on the wall of the Sursock Palace, heavily damaged after the explosion in the seaport of Beirut. Pic/AP
The 160-year-old palace withstood two world wars, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the French mandate and Lebanese independence. After the country's 1975-1990 civil war, it took 20 years of careful restoration for the family to bring the palace back to its former glory. "In a split second, everything was destroyed again," says Roderick Sursock, owner of Sursock Palace.
He steps carefully over the collapsed ceilings, walking through rooms covered in dust, broken marble and crooked portraits of his ancestors hanging on the cracked walls. The ceilings of the top floor are all gone, and some of the walls have collapsed. The level of destruction from the August 4 explosion at Beirut's port is 10 times worse than what 15 years of civil war did, he says.
The three-story mansion, built in 1860 in the heart of historical Beirut on a hill overlooking the now-obliterated port, is home to beautiful works of arts, Ottoman-era furniture, marble and paintings from Italy - collected by three long-lasting generations of the Sursock family.
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Lebanon Justice Minister Marie-Claude Najm on Monday became the third Cabinet minister to resign over the blast in Beirut. Meanwhile, a Lebanese judge began questioning the heads of the country's security agencies in connection with the blast.
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