Travel Guide Al-Bayda

It is difficult today to imagine that this very spectacular city 180 km northeast of Benghazi was destined to become the capital of Libya, that of King Idriss I, grandson of the founder of the Senoussiya brotherhood, after independence in 1951. At the entrance to the city, the great ochre building of the Islamic faculty Omar el-Moukhtar was a palace of King Idriss. It was in Al-Bayda that the first zawiya of the brotherhood of Senoussiya (zawiya Al-Bayda) was founded in 1843. In the 1930 s, Italians had built an agricultural village. Under royalty, planning plans were therefore ordered to an Italian cabinet to make Al-Bayda an administrative capital, develop its economy and make it a pole of urban immigration. According to these plans, Al-Bayda and Shahat should eventually form a single city. This urban project ended with the overthrow of the monarchy. With about 160 000 inhabitants, Al-Bayda is one of the Four main cities of Cyrenaica, with Derna, Tobruk and Ajdabiya (behind Benghazi). If you're coming in winter, you'll have a sweaters because the nights are cool, or even very cold, in this city at 600 m above sea level, where it snowed in February 2006 and February 2008.Generally, Al-Bayda is chosen as a base for exploration for Cyrene (18 km) and Apollonia, but the youth hostel in Shahat and the hotel at Apollonia can allow the path to continue.