Travel Guide Tripoli

The ancient Dane was renamed by the Arabs «Tarablous», last of the three cities of the region of «Tri-polis» in Greek (Oas, Leptis Magna and Sabratha) to continue. On the eve of the st century, this etymological sense retains some topicality in the planning of the Libyan capital: with 1,3 million inhabitants, with one in four Libyan inhabitants, Tripoli presents to the visitor three faces.First of all, the island of its old Arab town, then its city centre, an ancient Italian colonial quarter with its arcades and large white façades, finally the new city «jamahiri» with its vast buildings and private houses and its blocks of collective settlements, the result of rapid growth and expansion since the 1970 s and doing new skin recently: there is no longer any private or public construction in progress anywhere. Through these new shipyards, the urban landscape attests much better than long demonstrations of a dynamic city that has been recovered since the end of the embargo coupled with economic openness, and wants to put itself on the page.Tripoli, the White and Green (the colour of the Jamahiriya), the first city of Libya, deserves to be given at least one day.From the airport, the urban countryside leaves to the modern agglomeration that places its bars and large buildings. The arrival in the city centre is much more interesting. In the old town with its mosques «with thousands of domes» and its Ottoman buildings, which must not be missed, the activity of the is full. In front of its ramparts, customers and traders are active throughout the day in the popular neighbourhood around Rachid Street. Surprisingly living, this very lively popular neighbourhood is beside the window of a real business district at the foot of the Mediterranean and resolutely outward-looking. the five overturned towers of the Sawari al-Imad, the El-Fateh shopping Tower and the Hotel Corinthia, which will soon be joined by new tall buildings under construction.In the city centre, it is nice to walk along the great arcades of the old Italian quarter. They now have a myriad of shops with a Mediterranean luxury: state-of-the-art shops, fashion glasses, fashion clothing, and attractive feminine lending, imported from Italy and Turkey. It is here that we take the pulse of a Libyan society eager for change in its daily lives. Libya's young people and families around in the evening and shopping malls appear to be engaged in a real celebration of commercial activity, which has long been curtailed by the regime's guidelines and the embargo, and benefits from the recent opening of their country.