The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Beirut

Ancient history is getting in the way of construction in Beirut's building boom as new archaeological discoveries delay the springing up of long-planned high rises.

And the delays can be long, frustrating and expensive.

Construction on a luxury 23-storey residential building in the heart of the Lebanese capital, for example, has been stalled for 15 months after excavators stumbled on a 2,000-year-old Roman bath house.

"Imagine a developer waiting a year and three months without any progress being made on his building," says Samir Bey of Saifi Crown real estate development company that owns the 1,144 square metre (12,313 square foot) plot of land. This latest discovery of the ancient bath house is considered "a peripheral archaeological site for Beirut. It is not a landmark," says archaeologist Asaad Seif of the Directorate General of Antiquities (DGA).

The price of expropriating the site, located next door to a trendy Beirut restaurant, was too high and the action deemed unnecessary, he told AFP.

Instead, archaeologists and architects came together to devise a plan which would allow the preservation of the artifacts and at the same time permit the tower construction to proceed.

Under the plan, the three-roomed bath house is being taken apart piece by piece and will then later be rebuilt in its original form on the ground floor of the tower when it goes up.

"We are preserving it, but we are preserving it in a different way," says Seif.