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Much of Tripoli's charm lies within the walls of its small medina. The narrow alleys, many of them roofed against the burning sun) that twist and turn between the white-walled houses with their elaborate doorways, lead you deep into the heart of old Tripoli. You can walk here at any time of day or night, alone or in company as you like. You won't be pestered or harassed to buy in the busy souqs and in the quieter - and even empty - lanes you will feel quite safe. This is no tourist precinct - as so many old cities are these days - and although the medina has been through a period of neglect and semi-desertion, people still live and work here and there is now the beginnings of a conscious move to restore the medina as a living, working entity, not some quasi-historical showplace.
Entering the medina through the great stone arch at the end of Green Square will bring you first to the a small souvenir souq ( even here you'll be left simply to browse in peace) and then on, past shop after shop selling exquisite beaded and embroidered silks and striped fabrics, suitcases and household goods. The gold shops seem never-ending while the laneway is cluttered with barrows selling everything from embroidered slippers to dishcloths. Past mosques and hammams; coppersmiths hammering out their dishes and pots, and minaret-topping crescents, by hand as they have done for centuries; shops selling handsome men's outfits, braided waitcoats and black felt pillbox hats; old men wrapped toga-like in their white berber blankets; women - mostly in modern hejab but the occasional old lady swathed in the traditional fringed white all-enveloping robe gripped in her teeth; stalls piled high with fruit and vegetables; an carpet-cum-curio shop - Berber blankets and rugs, silver teapots and clay lamps; an Italian church newly reconsecrated to Anglicanism ; a Greek Orthodox school; grand 18th European consulates and a blank white house wall painted with the signs of a beauty parlour - a hairdryer and pots of lotions and potions.
Fascinating. Leave a Comment
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Take a tour out into the dunes and the desert and you will almost certainly end up taking tea by a Tuareg campfire. Bread baked in the sand - piping hot, fragrant, crusty and dense -and frothy green Tuareg tea will be offered. You'll be shown how both are made - the bread laid in sand heated by the coals of the fire and covered over, the sand bubbling like mud in a hot pool as the bread cooks beneath it until it is pulled, all covered in ash and sand from its "oven". A few sharp taps and a quick scraping away of the ash reveals the loaf which is then broken and shared - and there's not a grain of sand on it when you bite into the crust!
The tea is made in a pot and poured backwards and forwards several times between glass and kettle, settling the fine powdered leaves and creating a froth that rivals a well-shaken Coke. Custom and good manners dictate that you must drink 3 glasses before you say "no more" - but it is delicious - sweet and fragrant.
After tea, if you're lucky, it's time for music - drums and songs - before you leave the camp and make your way back to town. Leave a Comment
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Tripoli is the only city in Libya to have been continually inhabited since the time of its first foundation in something like 500BC.
The city's mediaeval medina now covers most of the city, known as Oea, built by the Phoenicians and subsequently rebuilt by the Romans. No trace of the Phoenician city remains but a walk through the medina reveals evidence of its Roman heyday. The most apparent and grandest is the Aurelean Arch but keep an eye out as you walk through the twisting lanes of the medina and you will see pillars like the one here, set into the corners and walls of the mediaeval buildings there.
The Aurelian Arch was built in 162-63 during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and marked the crossing of the city's cardo maximus (the main street running north-south from the harbour) and the decimus ( running east-west). Some of the relief carving on the arch is still in reasonable condition, and there are various pieces of architectural masonry in the garden around the arch.
The arch is floodlit at night when it makes a wonderful backdrop to the very pleasant restaurant on the righthand side of the square. Leave a Comment
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 Septimus Severus - the
Grim African by TheWanderingCamel,
1 more photos
The jewel in all this building is undoubtedly the great Triumphal Arch that tells the story of Septimus' victories and achievements, his family and his place within the might of Rome. Spanning the entry into the site, it's the first thing you see as you walk down into the city and it sets the scene perfectly for the marvels to come.
The bronze statue of Septimus Severan ( the Grim African) outside the museum is a modern reproduction, the somewhat more weathered original is inside along with a positive treasure trove of artifacts from the ruins. Leave a Comment Address: Leptis Magna lies 125 km east of TripoliDirections: The main site is open 8-6 every day, the museum is closed on Mondays. Seperate entry fees apply and there is a camera charge for the museum.
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Declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999, and with tourism growing all the time - there is certainly an impetus to restore and maintain the city. Its distance from Tripoli means that getting here is neither particularly cheap nor easy and, whilst numbers of visitors are growing steadily, Libya's tight visa rules plus its distance from Tripoli mean that it is unlikely to be swamped with visitors for a good while yet. That said, accommodation is limited and you would certainly be well advised to book ahead rather than rely on finding a bed once you arrive, especially in the peak tourist months of Spring and Autumn. A beautiful brand new hotel has recently opened on the outskirts of the new town, filling the need for top-end accommodation which was completely lacking.
Similarly, restaurant options are limited and fairly ordinary. In the old town there is a small teahouse that is just that - no food, though there is a clean loo (fluid waste only ) - the only one in the old town! It is possible to have lunch in one of the old houses but this must be pre-arranged.
A visit to Ghadames does not come cheap. Not only is there the expense of getting there, prices in the town are at quite a premium and there is very little room for bargaining. This is such a special place though - it is worth every penny and all the effort! Leave a Comment
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If Leptis is all imperial grandeur (Septimus Severus came from there and set about leaving his mark on the city with some gusto) Sabratha is the face of a very pleasant colonial existence. The coast is higher here so there are more sea views and the place was much smaller so things are on a more domestic scale. It's more ruinous than Leptis - a massive earthquake in 365AD wrought great damage on th city and being built of sandstone rather than limestone the ruins have weathered more - and gets fewer visitors - we virtually had the place to ourselves on our visit - gorgeous in the late sunshine. Apart from the theatre, which is fenced around, it's a very open site. There's an amazing amount of the original flooring left in lots of the buildings as well as lots of the marble facing on some walls -including the very splendid octagonal latrine at the seaward baths. Life must have been quite idyllic here - for the ruling class at any rate.
There's a glimpse of the Punic city that predates the Romans here at Sabratha in the Mausoleum of Bel that stands out quite clearly as you move through the north-western sector of the site. It may be a reconstruction - the original was dismantled by the Byzantines and the stones used in the city wall - but it is well done and is very striking.
You'll find the usual features of any Roman city here - Cardo Maximus, Forum, Civil Basilica, Senate, various temples, several baths ( the seaward baths are in particularly good condition and their location, overlooking the sea, is splendid), and a magnificent theatre. The ampitheatre, as is usual, lies at some distance from the centre of the city.
Whilst the rest of the city is considerably weathered and you will need a guide if you really want to know the in and outs of it all, again there is much to be said for taking the place as it stands, making use of your own guidebook and the signs that are there and working it out for yourself. Leave a Comment Address: Sabratha lies about 80km west of TripoliDirections: Open 8-6 every day. Seperate charges for the site, and museums and, as always in Libya, camera charges apply.
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Life for the women of Ghadames was almost completely confined to their homes. Only able to come down into the streets when the men were in the mosque, or for their own occasional visits to the mosque, they made use of the flat rooftops of the adjoining houses to move from house to house to visit family and friends. Celebrations and ceremonies were held on the rooftops too, as was a women's market.
The one place that was absolutely her own domain was the Al-Qubba - the canopied room-within-a-room in her home where , as a bride, she awaited the arrival of her husband and, when widowed, she sat to receive her visitors for the four months and ten days of her official mourning period. Leave a Comment
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No visit to Ghadames would be complete without a journey out into the desert dunes that lie not far from the city. This is where the classic Saharan landscape of your imagination begins - great sweeps of rippled dunes that rise in a long slope to a crest that can fall away on the other side in a near vertical drop - 4x4s are a must here. Late afternoon is the time to go, to see the sunset turn the desert sands from palest gold to burning reds - providing it's not overcast as it was the day I went. Never mind - the trip out was so interesting - beginning with a steep climb to a ruined desert castle (reputedly Roman) at Ras-al-Ghoul (Hill of Ghosts) with wonderful views across to Tunisia and Algeria - the borders are very close here. Some serious hooning around on the dunes followed - heart in mouth stuff at some of the vertiginous descents from the dunes. We stopped to look for - and found - some small desert roses (crystalline gypsum and barite formations), picked herbs to add to our tea ( how does it grow in this arid place?), observed the beginnings of a dune-in-the-making where the wind was blowing the sand up against a tiny plant.
I still got to see the desert glow red the following morning, as I watched the sunrise. Leave a Comment
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The dim passages and blank walls of the streets and lanes of Ghadames give absolutely no indication of what lies within. Not only are they surprisingly large, they truly are works of art - form and function marrying beautifully with the climate, the traditional way of life and a unique and extraordinarily vibrant way of decorating that made use of the most readily available materials - sun-dried bricks and gypsum for the walls, palm tree trunks for the doors and ceilings and red pigment made from pomegranate juice for the intricate red patterns that outine cupboards, niches and mirrors (used to bounce the light from the one or two tiny openings high on the walls and in the ceiling), stairs and doorways, carved panels in the stark white plaster walls and that dance around the room in the most wonderful way. Leave a Comment
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Despite Libya's often fierce resistance to the Italian occupation of the first half of the 20th century, the older parts of the city outside the medina still have a faded Italianate air to them - the arcaded streets and squares with cafes under their arches and white-painted buildings with their green shutters could just as easily be snoozing under the sun of a provincial town on the other side of the Med as here. A walk down one of the streets leading off the east side of Green Square will take you into this area of the city and lead you to the Grand Mosque where Islamic crescents have replaced the rooftop crosses that once marked this as the city's Cathedral.
The Church of San Francisco has services in many languages these days, to serve the various Christian communities in the city - Italians, Africans, Koreans - but inside it still looks and feels like an Italian church. Coffee will never replace tea as the drink of choice here - but bread is often Italian-style, pasta is a popular dish and the ubiquitous "LIbyan" soup (offered at every meal) is minestrone given a local twist. Leave a Comment
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