The Marble Arch, also Arch of the Philaeni (Italian : Arco dei Fileni), formerly known in Libya as El Gaus (i.e. "The Arch"), was a monument in Libya built during the days of Italian colonization. The arch marked the border between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, and was located on the Via Balbia (actual Libyan Coastal Highway) near Ra's Lanuf. [1]
The arch was designed by architect Florestano Di Fausto in response to a request by the Italian Governor-General Italo Balbo. It was unveiled on 16 March 1937 in a lavish night ceremony attended by Benito Mussolini.
The arch, which was 31 meters high, with an opening 15.75 meters (51 feet 8 inches) high and 6.5 meters (21 feet 4 inches) wide, and made with travertine stone (Rome's typical building material), was located some 30 km (19 mi) west of the possible borders between Carthage and Cyrene, the locality called in Antiquity Altars of the Philaeni (Latin : Arae Philaenorum) which was located approximately halfway between Ra's Lanuf and El Agheila. [1]
The landmark was named after the legendary Philaeni brothers of Carthage, who chose to be buried alive on that spot in order to gain this border for their home town. It bore two giant bronze statues of the brothers, represented as buried alive, surmounted by a stylised altar, mocking one of the disappeared Arae. The landmark was decorated by basreliefs which illustrated the legend.
On the arch's frontispiece was carved a Latin inscription taken from Horace's Carmen Saeculare . It read:
Alme Sol, possis nihil urbe Roma visere maius (which translates to: "Kind Sun, may you look upon nothing greater than the city of Rome")
King Idris I of Libya had the Latin inscription translated into Arabic. The arch was reproduced in postcards and Italian Africa lottery tickets and soon became one of the symbols of Italian Libya and of the works done by the Italian Libyan colonists.
Revolutionary leader Muammar Gaddafi, who considered the landmark as a sign of the Italian domination of Libya, demolished the arch using dynamite in 1973. Another possible reason for this demolition is that the arch was a symbol of separation between two parts of Libya, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The two bronze statues of the Philaeni brothers and parts of the marble reliefs are now located in a small museum in Medinat Sultan, around 50 kilometres (31 mi) from Sirte.
A water tower inspired by the monument was built in 1942 in the Italian town Riozzo, and survives to the present. [2]
Cyrenaica is the eastern coastal region of Libya. Also known as Pentapolis in antiquity, it formed part of the Roman province of Crete and Cyrenaica, later divided into Libya Pentapolis and Libya Sicca. During the Islamic period, the area came to be known as Barqa, after the city of Barca.
Oea was an ancient city in present-day Tripoli, Libya. It was founded by the Phoenicians in the 7th century BC and later became a Roman–Berber colony. As part of the Roman Africa Nova province, Oea and surrounding Tripolitania were prosperous. It reached its height in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, when the city experienced a golden age under the Severan dynasty in nearby Leptis Magna. The city was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate with the spread of Islam in the 7th century and came to be known as Tripoli during the 9th century.
Italo Balbo was an Italian fascist politician and Blackshirts' leader who served as Italy's Marshal of the Air Force, Governor-General of Libya and Commander-in-Chief of Italian North Africa. Due to his young age, he was sometimes seen as a possible successor of dictator Benito Mussolini.
Fezzan is the southwestern region of modern Libya. It is largely desert, but broken by mountains, uplands, and dry river valleys (wadis) in the north, where oases enable ancient towns and villages to survive deep in the otherwise inhospitable Sahara Desert. The term originally applied to the land beyond the coastal strip of Africa proconsularis, including the Nafusa and extending west of modern Libya over Ouargla and Illizi. As these Berber areas came to be associated with the regions of Tripoli, Cirta or Algiers, the name was increasingly applied to the arid areas south of Tripolitania.
Tripolitania is a historic region and former province of Libya.
The Italian colonizationof Libya began in 1911 and it lasted until 1943. The country, which was previously an Ottoman possession, was occupied by Italy in 1911 after the Italo-Turkish War, which resulted in the establishment of two colonies: Italian Tripolitania and Italian Cyrenaica. In 1934, the two colonies were merged into one colony which was named the colony of Italian Libya. In 1937, this colony was divided into four provinces, and in 1939, the coastal provinces became a part of metropolitan Italy. The colonization lasted until Libya's occupation by Allied forces in 1943, but it was not until the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty that Italy officially renounced all of its claims to Libya's territory.
The military history of Libya covers the period from the ancient era to the modern age.
Ras Lanuf is a Mediterranean town in northern Libya, on the Gulf of Sidra. The town is also home to the Ra's Lanuf Refinery, completed in 1984, with a crude oil refining capacity of 220,000 bbl/d (35,000 m3/d). The oil refinery is operated by the Ra's Lanuf Oil & Gas Processing Company, a subsidiary of the state-owned National Oil Corporation. Additionally, the city houses the Ra's Lanuf petrochemical complex – a major oil terminal – and oil pipelines: the Amal–Ra's Lanuf, the Messla–Ra's Lanuf, and the Defa-Ra's Lanuf pipeline.
Italo Gariboldi was an Italian senior officer in the Royal Army before and during World War II. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross by German dictator Adolf Hitler for his leadership of Italian forces in the Battle of Stalingrad.
Italian Libya was a colony of the Kingdom of Italy located in North Africa, in what is now modern Libya, between 1934 and 1943. It was formed from the unification of the colonies of Italian Cyrenaica and Italian Tripolitania, which had been Italian possessions since 1911.
Imperialism, colonialism and irredentism played an important role in the foreign policy of Fascist Italy. Among the regime's goals were the acquisition of territory considered historically Italian in France and Yugoslavia, the expansion of Italy's sphere of influence into the Balkans and the acquisition of more colonies in Africa. The pacification of Libya (1923–32), the invasion of Ethiopia (1935–36), the invasion of Albania (1939), the invasion of France (1940), the invasion of Greece (1940–41) and the invasion of Yugoslavia (1941) were all undertaken in part to add to Italy's national space. According to historian Patrick Bernhard, Fascist Italian imperialism under Benito Mussolini, particularly in Africa, served as a model for the much more famous expansionism of Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe.
Italian Tripolitania was an Italian colony, located in present-day western Libya, that existed from 1911 to 1934. It was part of the territory conquered from the Ottoman Empire after the Italo-Turkish War in 1911. Italian Tripolitania included the western northern half of Libya, with Tripoli as its main city. In 1934, it was unified with Cyrenaica in the colony of Italian Libya.
Italian Cyrenaica was an Italian colony, located in present-day eastern Libya, that existed from 1911 to 1934. It was part of the territory conquered from the Ottoman Empire during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911, alongside Italian Tripolitania.
The Libyan Coastal Highway, formerly the Litoranea Balbo, is a highway that is the only major road that runs along the entire east-west length of the Libyan Mediterranean coastline. It is a section in the Cairo–Dakar Highway #1 in the Trans-African Highway system of the African Union, Arab Maghreb Union and others.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Libya. Libya is a country located in North Africa. Bordering the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Libya lies between Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west.
The area of North Africa which has been known as Libya since 1911 was under Roman domination between 146 BC and 672 AD. The Latin name Libya at the time referred to the continent of Africa in general. What is now coastal Libya was known as Tripolitania and Pentapolis, divided between the Africa province in the west, and Creta et Cyrenaica in the east. In 296 AD, the Emperor Diocletian separated the administration of Crete from Cyrenaica and in the latter formed the new provinces of "Upper Libya" and "Lower Libya", using the term Libya as a political state for the first time in history.
Conditions worsened for the Jews of Libya after the passage of Italy's Manifesto of Race in 1938. Following the German intervention in 1941, some of the Jews of Libya were sent to camps in continental Europe, where those who survived stayed until the end of World War II.
Florestano Di Fausto was an Italian architect, engineer and politician who is best known for his building designs in the Italian overseas territories around the Mediterranean. He is considered the most important colonial architect of the Fascist age in Italy and has been described as the "architect of the Mediterranean". Uncontested protagonist of the architectural scene first in the Italian Islands of the Aegean and then in Italian Libya, he was gifted with a remarkable preparation combined with consummate skills, which allowed him to master and to use indifferently and in any geographical context the most diverse architectural styles, swinging between eclecticism and rationalism. His legacy, long neglected, has been highlighted since the 1990s.
The Arco della Vittoria, also known as Monumento ai Caduti or Arco dei Caduti, is a memorial arch located in Piazza della Vittoria in Genoa, Italy. It is dedicated to the Genoese who died during World War I, and it was inaugurated on 31 May 1931.
The Red Castle, in Arabic As-saraya Al-hamra, sometimes also Red Fort or Red Saraya, is a major landmark on the waterfront of Tripoli, bordering Martyrs' Square. It has been the home of the Red Castle Museum since 1919, and of the Libyan Department of Archaeology since 1952.
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Coordinates: 30°19′55.35″N18°46′34.66″E / 30.3320417°N 18.7762944°E
