Baladiyat al Jabal al Akhdar Things to Do

  Hotel Tbetsi
by TheWanderingCamel
 
  • Hotel Tbetsi
      Hotel Tbetsi
    by TheWanderingCamel
  • Rommel's HQ
      Rommel's HQ
    by TheWanderingCamel
  •   Things to Do
    by TheWanderingCamel
  • The Eastern Church
      The Eastern Church
    by TheWanderingCamel
  • Villa of Columns
      Villa of Columns
    by TheWanderingCamel
 

Reviews from VirtualTourist Members

Today's Tobruk

by TheWanderingCamel

Apart from its WW2 connections, and - aside from the cemeteries - very little is made of them - Tobruk really has nothing to offer the visitor. The town is growing very fast and much of it resembles a building site. The hotels range from the mediocre to the downright awful and this is not the place to go looking for a fine dining experience - the only guidebook recommended restaurant in town was closed for renovation whilst we were there. Rommel's HQ and wartime bunker is in lock down, as is the museum in a disused church in the centre of town, and the caretaker seems to have left town with the key. There is talk of the bunker being restored and a new wartime museum built but nothing's happening yet. There are a few rusting relics scattered around the bunker enclosure but the wreck of the Lady Be Good, a US bomber that crashed in a sand storm in 1943 and was found in 1958, has been moved...

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Grecian glory

by TheWanderingCamel

Largest of all the Greek sites of Libya, Cyrene rivals Roman Leptis Magna on the other side of the country in its splendours. Magnificent temples, a huge colonnaded agora, theatres, exquisite marble mosaic floors still in situ in elegant private houses, public spaces adorned by graceful sculptures, fountains, ritual baths, ceremonial altars ... all these and more spill down a steep hillside crowned with pine forests above a wide and fertile plain. The modern town of Shahat lies above and behind the site so nothing intrudes to spoil the views of the Mediterranean far below, and with such a vast site and so relatively few visitors to share it with, it's very easy to imagine yourself back into the past as you explore.The site was chosen by the first Greek settlers for its rich soils and abundant water supply, assets they shared in reportedly amicable co-operation with the local tribe who...

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Seaside Apollonia

by TheWanderingCamel

Apollonia, sited on a lovely stretch of coastline to the north-west of Cyrene, was the mountain city's port, but the wealth of its archaeological remains make it very clear that this was no mere workaday satellite for the larger city. Founded in the 7th century BC, its importance and status lasted right through into the 6th century AD, by which time pagan Greek and Roman beliefs had given way to Byzantine Christianity and some of the best preserved ruins we see today are in fact Christian basilicas that date from this later period, four of which can easily be identified, including the private chapel in the Byzantine governor's palace. Time and tide have obliterated nearly all the evidence of the busy port other than the foundations of some of the warehouses that stood here. A chain of small rocky islets created a barrier that formed a channel leading into the harbour - one of very few...

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"The graves of dead soldiers ....

by TheWanderingCamel

....are the greatest messengers of peace."These words of Albert Schweitzer are to be found on the wall of the massive fortress that overlooks Tobruk Harbour and houses the graves of 6026 German soldiers who died here during WW2. Although each of the dead lies in his own coffin, there are no lines of headstones here, no last words chosen by grieving families, no flowers blooming in the desert. Rather they lie beneath the stones of the central courtyard, their names engraved on black slate panels in countless lines of close-packed white letters. No eternal flame burns in the bowl supported on the shoulders of angels, nothing softens the hard austerity of this place but you can't come to Tobruk and not come here because, no matter what else has brought you to this furthest point of Cyrenaica, in death all are equal.There are 4 war cemeteries in Tobruk. The Knightsbridge (Acroma) cemetery...

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Tobruk - Rommel and the Rats

by TheWanderingCamel

Standing on the cliffs overlooking the deserted bay pictured here and up into the equally peaceful wadi running down to the sea, it's hard to imagine this area was the theatre for of some of the fiercest fighting in WW2 and the scene of a bitter siege that lasted 240 days. Having advanced relentlessly across North Africa, Rommel's Afrika Korps seemed invincible as they swept into the eastern seaport of Tobruk and they fully expected the Allied troops trapped there to crumble before their onslaught and constant air raids. Instead of surrendering, the Allies - Australian, British, Polish, Czech, Indian, Canadian, South African and New Zealanders, dug themselves into a line of trenches and tunnels encircling the town and, for the next eight months waged a war that brought the enemy to a state of complete exhaustion and the first major Axis defeat of the war.A rag-tag fleet of British and...

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The road to Tobruk

by TheWanderingCamel

From Susa, the road to Tobruk, the easternmost city in Libya, follows the coast quite closely and affords lovely views of the sea and the mountains as it rises and falls and curves around the headlands for the first 100km or so until you reach the small town of Derna. This is popular vacation territory for Libyans and there are a couple of rather institutional-looking holiday villages on the beach side of the road.Having visited the churches at R'as al-Hillal and l'Atrun the previous day, our first stop along the road was to see the huge cave at Hawa al Ftea, just a few kilometres beyond Susa. The walk up to the cave through a meadow of knee-high Spring flowers alive with the buzz of bees was a delight. The mouth of the cave towers high above the large pit excavated by archaeologists that revealed the earliest signs of human habitation in this part of Africa. There's nothing else to see...

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Two Byzantine churches

by TheWanderingCamel

Although Cyrenaica is known as the Pentapolis, meaning five cities, the riches of Cyrenaica together with its temperate climate made it an attractive place for settlement and there were in fact several other towns and cities scattered through the region. Some, like Barce and Berenice have completely disappeared. Qasr Libya only gave up its secret treasure in the mid-20th century. Scattered mausolea, scant remains of a monastery and other isolated ruins can be found by intrepid and determined visitors to the region but are well off the beaten track. Much more accessible are a pair of late Byzantine churches set down by the sea a few kilometres east of Susa/Apollonia, Ras al-Hillal (30km from Susa) and L'Atrun (another 9 km further on along the road to Derna).Ras al-Hillal was a secondary port for Cyrene though nothing remains of the town today other than the ruined church sitting quite...

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Ptolemais

by TheWanderingCamel

Lying 37 kms east of Tocra, the considerably larger ruins of Ptolemais (modern Tolmeita), were our first real indication of how rich and important the cities that constituted the Pentapolis were. Founded sometime in the 7th century BC, but only coming into real prominence in the 4th C BC, Ptolemais was the port for Barce, and although all traces of that city have entirely disappeared, there is enough evidence from the scale of Ptolemais and the many beautiful artifacts housed in its museum to tell us Barce must have been splendid indeed. Ptolemais continued to thrive under the Romans and through the years of Byzantine rule. Following a major earthquake in 365AD that saw the other cities of the Pentapolis largely destroyed, Ptolemais survived to become the region's main centre for another hundred years or so only to fall into decline in the 7th century AD with the arrival of the Arab...

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Cyrene - Practicalities of a visit

by TheWanderingCamel

Given that most people who come to Cyrene do so as part of an organised tour, for the most part the agenda of a visit will be in the hands of the tour leader. If however, you are fortunate enough to either be travelling completely independently, or to be putting together a tour tailor-made to your own requirements, here are a few things you might like to consider.1. Cyrene is a really extensive site and if you have more than a passing interest in Classical archaeology, you'll probably find that the usual day, or even half day, visit that most tours offer isn't enough for you to really appreciate the site. If you decide you are going to spread your visit over two days your options are a pretty basic hotel in Shahat (closest), more choice in Al Bayda (17km) - the reports I've heard from people who've stayed in a couple of them have been less than complimentary, and Susa (20 km) where the...

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Cyrene - Apollo and the princess

by TheWanderingCamel

Lovely mortal maidens were never safe when Greek gods were around so when Apollo spied Cyrene - a princess who loved to hunt - behaving in a most unprincessly way as it happened - she was wrestling a lion at the time - he promptly swept her up and carried her off across the sea well out of the reach of her no-doubt protective father and brothers. The place he chose for their love nest was a beautiful green mountain in Libya, where a spring bubbled out of the hillside that faced towards Greece and a wide and fertile plain stretched out towards the sea far below. When the first Greek colonists found the spring they identified the place with the legend, named their new city for the princess and built a sanctuary to the god beside the water so as to ensure they and their city stayed in his good books. As the city grew in size and wealth, the area around the sanctuary came to be its main...

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