Things to see and do Tripolitania

Leaving the Sévérienne basilica by the north, we follow a path that runs along the Byzantine wall to the Byzantine door. This wall wall was designed to protect the city from attacks by Berber tribes. The wall and door use stones from Roman buildings.

(An 12 Apr. ). Between Cardo and Theatre.

Leaving the south-east of the market, we lead to the path of the Cardo, with as a perspective the sober arc of Tiberius (35-36 apr. ) and then the arc de Trajan (109-110) in the second plan. The four-arch arch (tétrapyle) of Trajan, built in commemoration of the city's access to colony status, orne Libyan banknotes with a quarter of a dinar. The Trajan arc allowed traffic, unlike the arc De arc.

Between the two arches, one will note an engraved stone of an abundance horn, and a circle and a stick symbolizing the god Mercury.

The path you take at the entrance to the site leads to the right line with a view overlooking this fabulous arch, built in 203 apr. On the occasion of the visit of the emperor born in Leptis Magna in 146. The bow is located at the intersection of the two main tracks of the city, the Cardo maximus and the one which connected Tunisia (Carthage) to Alexandria. Raised from three large steps, the arc did not allow the passage of the tanks, which had to bypass the imposing monument.

This arc of 40 m in 40 has four entrances (tétrapyle arc) and three floors, for a height of about 20 m. It is entirely made of limestone, only its surface was covered with carved marble. Some marble ornamentations have been restored, including vine friezes. However, most of the original marble are at the Tripoli Museum. Thus winged victories on each side of the arcades and the great besieged on the four sides of the Attica (the summit of the arc on which statues were laid), which appear as August scenes of the life of the emperor and his family:

Continue straight and turn left at the Angle angle: Palaestra is located north of Hadrian's thermal baths. It was in this vast shaped stage divided by paved aisles that men were involved in physical exercises, such as struggle and race, before going to the baths. The palaestra is surrounded by about terrazzo columns in cipolin marble. During its construction, like the thermal baths in the 72nd century, columns supported the portico. Many of them were purchased from the Libyan tribes by French consul Claude Lemaire to be shipped to France in the th century.

(th century. ). From the old forum, orient direction north west by borrowing the small path along the shore on the right, until the wall of Byzantine enceinte. We will then discover the three main columns of cipolin marble from the frigidarium of Hadrian's thermal baths, lined in the sand. Then move to the southwest. The temple of Sérapis is recognizable in its four columns. The Christian living in Leptis worship their God there. The inscriptions that have been discovered are in Greek only. In Hellenistic times, the Rois kings of Alexandria made Sérapis a syncretic deity embodying the characteristics of the Egyptian God Osiris and of Greek gods like Zeus, Hades, Dionysus and Asclépios, God of Medicine. Subsequently, his cult developed in the Roman world.

Meaning "needles" in Arabic is the name given to the obelisk trim mausoleums. There are two who easily see about 35 km from Beni Walid on the route of Misratha and Zliten, which runs along the Wadi Wadi, before it crosses the trough of the Wadi. The remains of a fortified farm were found nearby. With the shrines-temples that can be seen in the northern necropolis of Ghirza, this type of obelisk was built by Berber farmers romanisés along the defensive boundary of the limès, the limit of Empire from the reign of Emperor Septime Severe.

This great mosque is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful in the country. It houses the tomb of Sidi Abdel Salam al-Asmar, a Sufi theologian of the sixteenth century, revered as a marabout and founder of a Koranic school that became a university of Islamic studies at a later date: Al-Asmary University in front of the mosque. A painting in the courtyard on the left of the mosque represents the latter as it was at the time of Sidi Abdel Salam, while its current appearance dates back to the 1980 s and is distinguished by a profusion of tiles of carved ceramics and stucco stucco.

The Koranic school hosts about 800 girls and 1 800 boys graduating from school. At the bottom of the courtyard of the mosque is the dormitory of the students. Vendeurs are often mailed to the mosque.

Following this path east from the Arc Sévère arc, it will be noted that the centre of the track was dug to insert it into the city's wastewater drainage system. At the angle of Decumanus and the street leading to Hadrian's thermal baths, by turning their eyes on the angle wall, one will distinguish a phallus engraved in the center of a stone, with an eye to its right, the harmful influences of the latter (the bad eye) being neutralized, according to Roman belief, by the protective properties and bienfaitrices of the phallus.

Starting at the height of the nymphée, the path to the Columns, drawn from the cord, stretched 420 m to the Roman port. It was 50 m wide, or 20 m between columns. Each side of the avenue had 125 columns on which the arches, without entablements, were directly rooted in Islamic architecture. This imposing avenue was part of the great beautification works of the city carried out in the early th century under the reign of Emperor Septime Sévère and was built at the initial geographic location of the Oued, which was built in the Punic city, the wadiLebda. The course was hijacked prior to construction as part of the construction of the port at the same time.

From the Curia, go along a caged barrier surrounding the remains of the Punic town uncovered during excavations, then take a small path to the right and continue about 150 m. One can also go northeast to the location of the Western pier warehouses. Little spectacular and distant, to visit only by those who have all their time. At the time of carthaginian, the mouth of the wadiLebda provided a natural shelter to the ships, which was partially installed under Nero. But it was under the reign of Septime Harsh that the port was actually highlighted, by diversion east of the natural course of the Wadi, originally located at the location of the Columns and which charriait charriait responsible for a regular silting of the estuary.

The port, with a circumference of 1 200 m, with its 800 m of docks and the possibilities of anchorages outside the perimeter of the Périmètre Oriental Pier now submerged, represented the third harbour of the Roman world, after Ostia and Carthage. The harbour is now sleeping under the alluvial Du Wadi Wadi, but it is still possible to distinguish certain remnants of harbour facilities, such as the base of the lighthouse at the western pier or the wharf limestone blocks.

These thermal baths are the only remains of a Roman villa. Left of the Punic Museum, slabs of geometric mosaics (th century) still decorate the soils of the atrium (entrance) and a frigidarium (cold bath) flanked by two swimming pools.

Opposite the Basilica of Apuleius, south of the temple of Liber Pater, lies the République Temple (th century). ), with the north-west corner of the Fontaine Tullus fountain, with the statue without head of the latter. Flavius Tullus was the patron who made this fountain gift to his city (th century). ). It is not clear what god was dedicated to the temple, the gift of the proconsul of Africa to his emperors, Marc Aurèle and Lucius Verus.

South of the fountain of Flavius Tullus, the imposing temple of Liber Pater testifies to the Popularity of the Cult that was made here in Dionysus. It was built in the th century and restored in the fourth century after the earthquake.

In front of the temple of Liber Pater is the location of the forum (th century), the nucleus of public life in Roman times, destroyed and restored in the fourth century, following the earthquake or attacks by Libyan tribes.

The giant amphitheatre (late 1st century) is almost km far away in south-east direction, and its remains may not be worth a détour detour. It could contain 10 000 people, for an area equivalent to two thirds of the Colosseum in Rome!

Take the time to visit the pottery shop at the back of the store. The pottery inside the store is more worked but also much more expensive (between 5 DL and 25 DL) than the pottery exposed to the outside or even the pottery in the room of the store (large flat at 4 DL). Tourists can also take advantage of the store's toilets before embarking on the long crossing south on the road to Sebha.

After the visit, you will be able to walk to this mosque located a little lower on the right on the way back. At the entrance is a small Koranic school. The mosque (the oldest of Kabaw) is built not far from the old Al-Kachkacha Synagogue. Abdullah al-Baruni, father of Suleyman al-Baruni, a hero of the Italian war, rests near the mosque. Suleyman al-Baruni (1870-1940), born in Jadou, was a recognized poet and one of the major figures in the fight against Italian colonization in Libya. It was harder to coordinate than in Cyrenaica where it was cemented under the banner of the brotherhood of La, behind the great Chief of war Omar Moukhtar. In May 1913, the Berber of the jebel Nefousa Suleyman al-Baruni lost a battle against the Italians and fled to Turkey from where he returned in 1915 to the head of a provisional republic in Jebel Nefousa and then, allied to Ramadan al-Suwayhli who had done the same in Misratha, he directs for a short period the Libya Autonomous Republic with the backing of the Italians who had it. circumscribed the duties.

The Mausoleums tombs are those of farmer soldiers who lived there from the third to the th century, with their families in fortified farms. Their agricultural work was continued after them: it was only in the th century that places ceased to be occupied, and a local legend said that these late inhabitants had sinned and were punished by the pétrification of their village. Some shrines (obelisk or temple form) or their decorative friezes were transported to the museums in Tripoli, Leptis Magna and Beni Walid, others did not survive an earthquake. The mausoleums, particularly well preserved despite the passage of time, lie in a stone desert, south of the buildings of the large fortified farms. One might wonder what reservations the choice of construction of farms in this area, where water was supplied mainly by tanks and where the land of the crops, installed in the bed of the Wadi Wadi, was to be artificially enriched by the installation of walls retaining the seasonal flow of water and silt from the Wadi. In fact, this choice was not motivated by agricultural considerations but by military necessity.

With the slaves offered to them, these farmers-military soldiers of the limès, called limitanei, cultivated date, olive fields, fig-fig, vine, barley, wheat and legumes. As the beautiful tombs of the tombs tell us, they labouraient their land with camels, horses or oxen, possessed herds and hunted hares, ostriches, gazelles, antelopes and fauves like lions and leopards then resold for the arena games in the Roman cities. Some scenes of the frescoes at the tombs of Ghirza also tell the warlike activities of the farmer-soldiers.

Often, these farmers were not Romans but natives recruited by the Romans, as was the case with Romanisés Romanisés De. These sédentarisées populations therefore lived at the confluence of two cultures, which appeared brilliantly in the decorative frescoes at the Mausoleums tombs, which were financed by children upon the death of their parents. On some mausoleums, a Latin inscription gave their names, all of which are of Libyan and non-Roman origin, except the name of the Marchius family. While these limestone mausoleums borrow from the Greco-Roman architectural canons, their decorative motifs, on the other hand, bear witness to a highly local inspiration in the naive figurative drawing as in inspiration, using a Roman symbolism but also carthaginian.

The three mausoleums-temples of the northern necropolis (south of the fortified farms), of which a particularly large one, are raised on the podium with the corinthians and ionic capitals surrounding a murée (chamber) murée. The funeral rooms are under the stars. In the south necropolis (1,5 km south of the other side of the Wadi River) was one of the largest Obélisque obelisk in Libya and was a two-column mausoleum by side that was transported to the Tripoli Museum.

The fauna and flora of the tombs of the tombs are in these funerary monuments, a symbolic meaning devoid of phoenicio-punic references. The palm tree, for example, is linked to the cult of the god Baal Hammon, god of Fertility and Harvest and the main carthaginian deity. The lion is a sacred animal in the cult of the goddess Tanit and protects the burials. The goddess of Fertility Tanit, Parèdre of Baal Hammon, was attached to the Roman goddess Junon. As for the vine, it is major in the cult of Dionysus-Bacchus, which grafted into the cult of the cult God Shadrapa, God of Wine, but also God Healer and Fertility.

The first European who lives at the Mausoleums of Ghirza, English Lieutenant W.H. Smyth, in 1817, was far from having archaeological concerns: he came to take from any statues. The description he did then cast no criticism of the Libyco-Roman style of the tombs, which he found ugly!