Travel Guide El-Athrun

The two Byzantine basilicas of El-Athrun, by the sea, deserve a great deal of detour. At the end of 9 km after the village of Ras el Hilal, on the road to Derna, a beautiful palm grove appears on the edge of a promontory on the seafront, the western basilica of El-Athrun. Take the first road you will see on the left. It goes down to the heart of the gardens of the palm grove of the village of El-Athrun, formerly the village of Erythron. The two Byzantine churches are ceinturées from a large ochre wall. Walk up to the door of the site. Sumptuous views of the cliffs and the sea.The two basilicas were released in 1960 by an American archaeologist, Walter Widrig, and in 1964 the Libyan Antiquities Department restored part of the Western Basilica. It was in 2001 that a Franco-Libyan archaeological mission, led by Professor André Laronde and funded by the French Senate, collected the marbles to reconstruct the Basilica of origins. The result is convincing, thanks to a formidable archaeological work and excellent state of marble plates and columns.The small village of Erythron was a centre for the pilgrimage and transit of agricultural products. Promoted to bishopric in late th century-early Ve, Erythron benefited from the dynamism of Apollonia, the capital of Pentapole in the th century. Villages in the surrounding areas were under its jurisdiction. Despite some doctrinal differences with the bishop of Erythron, it appears that these two churches of the century have remained under the control of religious orthodoxy.