“While Libya has much to offer us – including towering mud-brick Berber granaries, exceptional prehistoric rock art and wild adventures beneath the Saharan stars – its most powerful visitor magnet by far is Leptis Magna. A 75-minute drive west of Tripoli, this was the capital of Roman Africa in the third century. Earthquakes, floods and imperial decline led to its downfall, then the desert sands covered everything up until a group of Italian soldiers found themselves camping on top of the Arch of Septimus Severus in the 1920s.
As ruins go, Leptis is world class on two counts. Firstly, it is huge. Here you can wander the streets of a prosperous seaside city that was once home to 100,000 people – and because Libya is still a relatively new arrival to the tourist map, at times it feels like you’ve got the whole place to yourself. Secondly, the quality of what survives is astounding – a haughty triumphal arch, a massive forum, lavish marble baths, a 16,000-seater amphitheatre, a seaside hippodrome where races were held before roaring crowds of up to 23,000 spectators.
Visitors frequently remark, as they wander the flagstoned roads rutted with the wheel marks of bygone chariots, how easy it is to imagine people living here all those years ago. Bridging the gap between them and us, then and now, is easy when you visit the city market, with its marble fish counters and carved stone tables where oil and spices were measured out. The theatre still has its VIP box, road-signs point the way to the brothel, rows of marble latrines take us back to basics. In the nearby Villa Silin, a luxurious second-century des res, the walls and floors are decorated with delicate frescoes and exquisite mosaics depicting pygmies, crocodiles and chariots competing at the circus.
In my view, Leptis deserves a two-day visit – one to see it all, and a second to go back and dream. The site is an easy commute from Tripoli, which is also worth exploring. With its abundant green flags and ubiquitous portraits of the nation’s leader, Muammar Qadafi, the capital of what is officially known as the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya feels something of a stage set. Many of its grandest buildings date from the colonial era, and the Italians’ ornate banks, piazzas and churches add an operatic mood to the flagship city of this peaceful and welcoming Muslim nation. The atmosphere in the medina is relaxed, the shops hassle-free, and the only jarring note comes from the odd polemical sign that -announces that this pharmacy is “strictly for martyrs’ sons”, or observes how the old British Consulate, built in 1744, was used as a launch pad for scientific expeditions that were missions “to occupy and colonise vital and strategic parts of Africa”.
One sight not to miss in Tripoli is the Jamahiriya Museum, where many of the greatest treasures from Leptis are now displayed. Here, magnificent busts and sculptures stand frozen in time like children playing a game of musical statues. Venus, Mercury, Apollo, a fit-looking Mars … The beauty of the gods lingers in my head, along with more modern exhibits like the turquoise VW Beetle Qadafi drove around in the Sixties as he spread his revolution, and an -entire floor devoted to “The Era of the Masses”, where visitors can admire a lovely floral five-piece suite used for entertaining dignitaries. History has left Libya an Arab country with a taste for espresso and macaroni, but there is no wine, just abundant bottles of “The Water of the Great Man-Made River”, which is the result of a long-distance pipe-dream of Qadafi’s that taps underground reservoirs far away in the Sahara. Lorries covered in sand and flights coming in from Niamey and Ouagadougou are a reminder that we are on the fringes of the Sahara. For centuries this was the final stop on the great trans-African caravan routes – today the country’s cosmopolitan air is sustained by oil wealth”.
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Source: Extract from Roman Reveries (by Kipat Wilson) The National Newspaper, Abu Dhabi – Published 5th August 2010.