How Libya almost became the Mediterranean's hottest holiday destination

When I went through US Passport Control in Miami a few years ago the officer became highly suspicious of the stamp in my passport that showed I had entered Libya in 2004. To him this North African country was perhaps second only to North Korea in the pantheon of the world’s pariah states. So why had I gone there? “Leptis Magna,” I replied crisply, and when he looked blank I explained that it was one of the world’s greatest and best preserved Roman sites.  

Modern Libya was born 70 years ago on December 24 when the former Italian colony gained its independence as the United Kingdom of Libya under King Idris. Its heritage, location (three and a half hours’ flying time from London) and coastal Mediterranean climate all make it a potentially rich destination for the kind of tourism that thrives in neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia. Yet its turbulent history since independence in 1951 has ensured it remains a byword for chaos and violence. 

In 1959 the discovery of oil turned one of the world’s poorest countries into one of Africa’s richest, but also one of its most corrupt. A decade later Idris was ousted in a military coup headed by Muammar Gaddafi and Libya turned into the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, an autocracy built around the Gaddafi personality cult and a sponsor of regional and global terrorism. 

Civil war followed the rise of the Arab Spring movements across the Middle East and in October 2011 Gaddafi was killed by rebel fighters. In the decade since, the country has been riven by violence and chaos. It is one of the last places on Earth you would consider going on holiday and the Foreign Office advice, which has been in place since 2014, is “against all travel to Libya… Local security situations are fragile and can quickly deteriorate into intense fighting and clashes without warning.”

Yet this isn’t the complete story. For a brief window in the early 2000s Libya became a niche destination and there was hope that tourism might help to effect permanent change there. The symbol of that hope was the rapprochement between Gaddafi and Prime Minister Tony Blair in a Bedouin tent near the Libyan capital, Tripoli, in March 2004. A month or so later I stepped off a plane at Tripoli airport for a week-long tour. 

As I pushed my baggage through the terminal building an English oil worker who was heading in the opposite direction – on several weeks’ leave back in the UK – asked me incredulously if I had come on holiday. When I said yes he asked what there was to see – “apart from that old ruin down the road.” He meant Leptis Magna, east of Tripoli.

In truth there was a lot more to see than that. Leptis Magna is just one of the “Three Cities” – established by the Phoenicians and developed by the Romans – from which Tripoli derives its name, the others being Sabratha in the west and Oea, on the site of the present capital. Beyond these rich Roman ruins my favourite place was the miraculous desert city of Ghadames, a whitewashed labyrinth of windowless houses and mosques designated a Unesco World Heritage Site. 

On the day-long Sahara crossing to reach it we paused, like the nomads of old, at hauntingly beautiful Berber qasrs. These fortified granaries built to store and protect grain, olive oil and fruit rose like visions in the warping desert light.

I say “we paused” because I was not allowed to travel on my own, poking my nose where I wished. As with other autocracies and hermit states – Iran and North Korea, for example – Libyan officialdom was highly paranoid and visitors were only admitted on a strictly limited and controlled basis. I travelled in a group of nine Brits, mostly elderly, mostly women, on a strict itinerary. 

It is a testament to my then sexism and ageism that when I saw the group for the first time at Tripoli airport my heart sank. In fact they were knowledgeable, indomitable and charming, one of the best groups I have ever travelled with. But even they grew short-tempered at the perpetual, unsmiling presence on our minibus of a goon in a leather coat, and our guide’s palpable irritation whenever anyone had the temerity to express curiosity. “Ooo, I could knock his block off,” said a lady from the Wirral when he stonewalled a perfectly innocuous question for the umpteenth time.

This sense of being watched and barely tolerated came to a head in Ghadames when a man claiming to be an Algerian diplomat collared us in our hotel and said it was a relief to talk to Westerners, that everywhere he went he was followed by Libyan spies. Was he a plant, tempting us to say ill-advised things against the Gaddafi regime? At any rate we played dumb and kept mum.

Our trip did not herald a flourishing of tourism and an opening up of Libya as our group had naively hoped. In the 17 years since, whenever Libya has featured in news bulletins – and it is always in connection with political failure and violence – I have wondered about the fate of the people and places we visited. 

It comes as no surprise that Sabratha, Leptis Magna and Ghadames are all on the Unesco List of World Heritage in Danger. The two Roman sites were poorly protected even back in 2004. The degree of looting and desecration that must have taken place since does not bear thinking about, though such concerns have, quite rightly, been subordinated to the overwhelming human tragedy. But one image of Leptis Magna stays in my mind and sums up the lost hope of Libya. It is of a shepherd with a welcoming smile who was resting on the arch of Septimius Severus, apparently without a care in the world. 

When might Libya return to travel itineraries?

Jonny Bealby, founder of adventure travel specialists Wild Frontiers, says:

My company Wild Frontiers became experts in tourist extraction during the Arab Spring of 2011. In the space of five months we had to evacuate groups from five countries: Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Mali and Libya. Sadly, Egypt is the only country back on our books. 

People forget how recently Libya was a holiday option, and we ran multiple trips to the country back in the Noughties. It was a fantastic destination, and I look back on the trips with incredible fondness.

It has some of the most extraordinary ancient Roman sites anywhere on Earth in the shape of Leptis Magna and Sabratha, both of which sit right on the Med. Leptis Magna is mind-blowing, a proper city with a hippodrome, a theatre, baths and temples. Sabratha reminded me of Tyre in Lebanon, where the colonnades go right down to the sea. Sadly, some of those colonnades would later be used to hang people. 

Even more special, for me, was heading down into the desert. You’ve got these enormous sand seas, a bit like Saudi Arabia’s Empty Quarter, and we’d travel in by Land Cruiser, rent sandboards and surf down the dunes, swim out into lakes that were as hot as a bath, and then camp out under the stars. There was also prehistoric rock art to discover, featuring incongruous images of crocodiles, hippos and giraffes – all animals that roamed the region 20,000 years before. 

We used to do one-week trips, taking in the Roman sites in the north and the desert in the south, while spending time in Tripoli too. It was a great city, with lovely restaurants (but no alcohol), an atmospheric souk and an amazing museum. 

I would love to take tourists back there as it’s such a fascinating place, and we are keeping tabs on the security situation. Getting information about Libya is a struggle, however.

We’re currently focused more on Syria, and are trying to relaunch a tour in 2023, combining it with Lebanon and featuring Damascus, but probably not Aleppo. Perhaps we’ll look at Libya for 2024. wildfrontierstravel.com