Old Sidon’s buildings are both homes and heritage. A UN-Habitat program funded by the British Council treated those roles together, restoring mixed-use residential and commercial buildings in Sidon and Tripoli rather than separating conservation from residents’ daily needs.
Across the two cities, the program reported work on 36 buildings, 410 direct beneficiaries and 25,000 indirect beneficiaries. In Sidon, the intervention centered on Souk el-Hayyakin and Rue el-Batta around a historic hammam.
For Sidon’s property sector, the lesson is practical: restoration is not only cosmetic. Safe structures, maintained utilities and viable ground-floor shops can protect residents while sustaining the economic value of an inhabited historic quarter.
This article is an original Times of Sidon analysis of the project information published by UN-Habitat; it does not estimate sale prices or investment returns.