Black gold: the key to Libya’s future

Tripoli

The Roman theatre in Sabratha simmers in the afternoon sun, glowing a warm terracotta. It is a magnificent site as we head west from Tripoli to the Mellitah Oil and Gas Complex. Dating back to the irrepressibly commercial Phoenicians, who founded a trading post here sometime between the fourth and seventh centuries BC, Sabratha is essentially a Roman creation, built in the late second century AD at the outset of the Severan dynasty. Septimius Severus was Africa’s first Roman emperor and he liked to build big. The word imperial scarcely does justice to his finest creation, Leptis Magna, east of Tripoli towards the wreckage of Misratha. Enough pink and green cipollino and brecia marble, set off with black and red Egyptian granite, to satisfy a dictator’s wildest dreams. Only recently Gaddafi was reported hiding vast hordes of ammunition here.

The impossibly romantic setting of the theatre, with an iridescent sea only yards behind the three storey, 25 metre scaenae frons that positively towers above the stage, is a powerful reminder of ancient power plays on the Barbary coast and a pointer, perhaps, towards happier days for Libya’s woefully under-developed tourism sector.