Villa Sursock Rooms, Beirut

We arrived on a warm evening when Rue Gouraud was just beginning to fill, the scooters weaving, the bars setting out their chairs, the whole of Gemmayzeh shaking off the day. Villa Sursock Rooms occupies a nineteenth-century house that, the owner told us quietly, had been damaged and patiently rebuilt, its triple-arched windows and ochre stone restored stone by stone. Stepping through the gate into the jasmine-heavy courtyard, the street's energy dropped to a pleasant hum. Inside, the central hall soared two storeys to a coloured-glass fanlight, the floor a sea of relaid encaustic tile. There was something quietly heroic about the place, beauty insisted upon against the odds.

The room

Our room opened off the grand central hall, its ceiling easily four metres high, its tall windows shuttered against the afternoon sun. The floor was original encaustic tile in faded ochre and teal, the kind no one makes any more, lifted and relaid by hand during the rebuild. The bed was dressed in crisp white with a single bolster of antique Aleppo silk; an armoire of dark walnut held the wardrobe. The bathroom was thoroughly modern, marble and brass, but the room's soul was old Beirut: a balcony of wrought iron overlooking the courtyard, a ceiling fan turning slowly, the scent of lemon blossom drifting up from below. We slept with the shutters cracked to the garden, not the street.

Beirut keeps losing these houses and keeps refusing to let them go; this one is the refusal made beautiful.The Suite Edit

Service & food

Service is warm, irreverent and unmistakably Beiruti, the staff quick with a recommendation and quicker with a joke. Breakfast is a Lebanese spread to linger over: man'ousheh hot from a nearby oven, labneh with mint and olive oil, foul, fresh figs, and cardamom coffee. There is no restaurant, by design, since Gemmayzeh is one of the great eating quarters of the Mediterranean and the staff will happily send you to the right table, a tucked-away wine bar one night, a charcoal grill the next. The courtyard doubles as an honesty bar of Lebanese arak and Bekaa Valley reds, best enjoyed under the lemon trees as the street comes alive.

The verdict

Villa Sursock Rooms is for the traveller who wants Beirut without a buffer, its resilience, its style, its refusal to be dull, lived from inside one of the city's beautiful old houses rather than observed from a tower. Gemmayzeh's galleries, bars and grills are all at the door. The honest caveat is exactly that location: Rue Gouraud is the engine of Beirut's nightlife, and on Friday and Saturday the street stays loud until very late. Ask firmly for a courtyard-facing room, pack earplugs as insurance, and you will have the city's heart without losing your sleep to it.