The sandstone building's architect was the famed Youssef Aftimos, born in the Chouf Mountains in the 19th century, when Lebanon was still part of the Ottoman Empire.

Aftimos worked in Lebanon — and elsewhere — through the dawn of the 20th century as it morphed from Ottoman province to French colony and finally, an independent state in 1943.

Many of the mansions built during the period he worked still lend central Beirut much of its charm, their shapes reimagining Ottoman and European styles: groups of three arches topping slender pillars and tall windows, red roofs, balconies overlooking the Mediterranean and airy salons where richly colored tiles glowed beneath crystal chandeliers.

For a wealthy family named Barakat, Aftimos dreamed up a mansion of ochre sandstone decorated with carvings made from another harder local stone known in Arabic as furne. It is really two houses, each with several apartments, joined together by an unusual central hall, straddling a corner that allowed light to pour into almost every room.

The Barakats lived on the second floor, on the side with the best view down the hill to the Mediterranean, and rented out the other apartments. "And they lived happily ever after," Hallak says. "Until 1975."

That was the year when simmering tensions in Lebanon bubbled up into a civil war that would seethe — multifactional and fueled by regional powers — for 15 years. The death toll is still highly contested, but tens or even hundreds of thousands are believed to have died. When it was over, Beirut was a shattered city, in some areas every building was damaged or destroyed. Many families left, although some of the Barakats stayed and still live in Lebanon. Paul Barakat runs a carpet business next to a Beirut museum. He welcomed this visitor, although he politely declined an interview.