During his wandering years, in Europe, the Middle East, India ... then in Lebanon where he settled in the early sixties, Jacques Liger-Belair, everywhere, drew the countries, the places he visited.
He drew Beirut, the "happy city" and careless of years of peace, he drew the "ravaged city" at the end of the war, and its ruins overrun with crazy vegetation ... then the big reconstruction projects, and the facades that were being redone, and its inhabitants returned to the alleys and the shops of their downtown found.
From these sketches, from 1965 to 2002, was born this sketchbook which evokes the metamorphoses and the rebirth of the city of Beirut.