How Beirut’s forgotten Roman baths found new life with marble makeover

Group of Lebanese designers have transformed ancient site with installation exhibition that explores water, memory and healing in open-air gallery

Beirut's Roman baths were built in the 1st century AD. Photo: We Design Beirut

Hidden behind high-rises in the heart of Beirut, the city’s Roman baths – built in the 1st century AD – are often overlooked despite their historical significance.

Recently, the archaeological site was given new life through Of Water and Stone, a marble installation exhibition curated by Nour Osseiran that transformed the ruins into an open-air gallery of design and reflection.

The showcase explored Beirut’s layered history through themes of rejuvenation, healing and ritual. Built around natural hot springs, the baths once served as social centres celebrated for their therapeutic properties.

They were among four major thermae in ancient Beirut, with their terracotta hypocaust stacks and overall layout still visible today. Discovered in 1968 and excavated in the 1990s, the site had remained largely inaccessible since the 2000s due to nearby road closures and its proximity to the parliament building and Grand Serail.

Installations from local artists inspired by the Roman baths are being displayed alongside the structures. Photo: We Design Beirut

“This year marked a special moment, as the main road leading to the baths finally reopened to the public,” Osseiran tells The National. “We wanted to bring new life to this historic space through a design exhibition – inviting people to reconnect with the site, experience it anew, and hopefully foster a sense of care and stewardship for its future.

“It brought together 21 designers invited to respond to the site – its history, materials, architecture and imagined futures. Each piece used marble to explore themes of water, care, community and healing. In many ways, the exhibition was about how we inherit and reshape the past; how something as ancient as marble, or as fluid as water, can still speak to how we live and care today.”

The installations were placed along the staircase bisecting the baths and on the upper walkways – close enough to create visual contrast while protecting the site’s integrity. Their interventions evoked everything from birdbaths and natural jacuzzis that once animated daily life to the overlooked stories of Beirut’s women and the material cultures of stone, soaps and bubbles.

All works were produced by Stones by Rania Malli, a local marble specialist that supported the designers – many of whom were working with the medium for the first time.

“Marble was chosen because it carries a beautiful duality: it is both strong and fragile,” Osseiran says. “It can withstand the outdoors, which is essential for a public space like the Roman baths, yet this rock-solid material can also be softened by water. Beyond its monumentality, marble holds memory – it’s a geological archive of pressure, formation and erosion. With the expertise and support of Rania Malli, the designers were able to explore the possibilities of the material while engaging deeply with the site’s history.”

Various pieces drawing from the city's history are on display across Lebanon's capital. Photo: We Design Beirut

Some pieces were functional – such as Carl Gerges’s Echoed-Thermes, a circular hot-water jet bath carved from a single block of green marble – while others were sculptural, like Diana Ghandour’s Barrel in Blush, a series of pink-marble decorative items inspired by ancient cleansing tools and accessories.

Claude Missir’s Circle of Echoes featured 24 marble pigeons gathered around a polished black basin. In antiquity, the baths would have been surrounded by hundreds of pigeons, much like the nearby car park beside Beirut’s blue mosque today.

“In Circle of Echoes, the pigeons stand as quiet symbols of the people who once gathered here,” Missir says. “They symbolise peace, rebirth and collective memory. The black marble circle acts as a mirror of time, allowing the past to be seen as new. Placed across the original Roman paving, with scattered pigeons inhabiting the space freely, the piece revived the role of the baths as a communal gathering place.”

Rhea Younes’s Paravent – a sculptural pink-marble divider with shelves – took inspiration from the fire that once heated the bathhouse, with a fluid, perforated form resembling flickering flames. “This piece embodies the dialogue between permanence and fluidity,” Younes says.

Many of the artists who contributed to the exhibition were working with stone materials for the first time. Photo: We Design Beirut

“Just as the baths once offered spaces for reflection, gathering and ritual, the Paravent invited viewers into a unique spatial experience – where sculpture became both screen and passage, partition and connection.”

Other highlights included Mohamed Fares’s three interconnected pieces that took a multisensory approach. Aroma, a basin with concentric circles, diffused relaxing scents; Longevity symbolised harmony between nature and people; and The Offering was interactive, documenting visitors’ collective presence throughout the day.

“Healing rituals engage all five senses, awakening the body and spirit through sound, scent, touch and a sense of the sacred,” Fares says. “Once a grand architectural marvel, the Roman Baths have been gently reclaimed by nature, now embodying endurance and equilibrium. The final sculpture invited guests to place a flower in designated holes, transforming it into a garden symbolising harmony and shared commitment to well-being.”

Viewed at night, the exhibition offered a markedly different experience – evoking the baths as they might once have been, softly illuminated as if by candlelight, with the surrounding high-rises fading into darkness.