If Tripoli is your first sight of Libya, prepare to be dazzled. Literally. The Bride of the Sea, as she is evocatively known to Tripolines, is stunningly white – an unforgettable feature of arrival here for as long as anyone can remember. Try this traveller’s view from 700 years ago: ‘When we approached, we were blinded by the brilliance of the buildings, from which the burning rays of the sun were reflected. I was convinced that rightly is Tripoli called the White City.’
Gleaming, Tripoli rises before you, staring out across the Mediterranean with insouciance and swagger, sweltering under a shameless sun just as she has for the three millennia since the seafaring Phoenicians established a trading post here. For centuries, this was the most important terminus of the slave trade routes of Tripolitania – the Roman province of the Three Cities – that penetrated across the desert deep into sub-Saharan Africa. Tripoli was linked to the outside world through this wretched trade.
Libya’s global connections may have declined over the past few decades, but they are picking up again now as it comes in from the metaphorical cold (in fact, the glorious climate is one of the country’s many charms). Still, the lingering sense of isolation adds to the exoticism of a country that has the finest Roman ruins in the Mediterranean, miles of unspoilt, sun-kissed beaches and the most extraordinary desert landscapes you’ll ever see.
And don’t forget the warmth of the welcome here, something that travellers have faithfully reported for centuries. Libyans greet you with the enthusiastic over-the-top hospitality that is the Arabs’ stock in trade. Greetings run into minutes. The pace of life – once again, changing as modernity starts to intrude – is a world away from the hurried West, and long may it remain so. Don’t give your BlackBerry another thought.
Head into Tripoli’s Old City and thread your way through Suq Al-Mushir, the gateway into the medina, to drink tea, smoke a shisha, haggle over trinkets and lose yourself in the dusty, winding alleys that make up this bijou market. One of my favourite landmarks is the old British Consulate on Shar’a al Kuwash, marked by a plaque describing the building’s illustrious history as a staging post for important voyages of discovery.
These pioneering 19th-century missions into the Sahara have been described as ‘so-called European geographical and explorative scientific expeditions to Africa, which were in essence and as a matter of fact intended to be colonial ones to occupy and colonise vital strategic parts of Africa’.
Once you’ve glimpsed the decaying Arch of Marcus Aurelius – best viewed from Dar Zomeet, an inspired conversion of a 19th-century Arab house in the heart of the medina and a good indication of the new, only recently unthinkable, Libyan luxe – your appetite for all things Roman will get the better of you and it’ll be time to hotfoot it along the coast. Any trip to Libya must include the two other cities that, together with Tripoli – which the ancients knew as Oea – made up Tripolitania: to the east, stately Leptis Magna; to the west, for years my favourite, the diminutive jewel of Sabratha.
Go to the next page for gladiator fights and witchcraft ruins.
Find out how Tripoli, Libya's capital, is pulling in the tourists.
