Libya contains some of the best-preserved Greco-Roman ruins in the world, largely because the Sahara that covers most of the country has acted as a natural preservative. Leptis Magna, on the Mediterranean coast near Khoms, was one of the greatest cities of the Roman Empire — birthplace of Emperor Septimius Severus, who lavished it with monuments, forums, and an extraordinary theatre. Much of it still stands, the stone intact, the scale legible, visited by far fewer tourists than the equivalent ruins in Italy or Greece.
Cyrene, in the Green Mountain region of eastern Libya, was a Greek colonial city founded in 630 BC that became one of the most important cities in the ancient Mediterranean world. The ruins include a Temple of Zeus rivalling the Parthenon in scale, a necropolis, agora, and bathhouses. The site is UNESCO World Heritage and receives minimal visitor attention not because it is less significant than comparable sites but because Libya's political situation since 2011 has made access difficult.
The Sahara that covers most of Libya's interior contains one of the world's most extraordinary desert landscapes: the Acacus Mountains, where prehistoric rock art — paintings and engravings of animals, humans, and scenes of life — covers cliff faces across thousands of square kilometres. The images date from 12,000 years ago to roughly 100 AD, recording the transformation of the Sahara from a green, populated landscape to the desert it is today. The animals in the oldest images — hippopotami, elephants, crocodiles — no longer exist within thousands of kilometres.
