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LEPTIS MAGNA
Images (Dec. 1999 - Jan. 2000)
Leptis Magna. Ancient and important Roman city of the province of Africa, situated to around 100 kms to east of Tripoli, on the coast of actual Libya, near the small town al-Khums. Commercial landing of the Phoenicians and then Punic city, Leptis became Roman to half the 1st century B.C. From the 1st to the 3rd century AD the city had an extraordinary urbanistic development, particularly to work of the emperor Septimus Severus, that had been born here.
Between its more notable monuments there are the Theater and the Market (beginning of the 1st century AD), the Hadrianic thermal baths (2nd century AD), the Arch of Septimius Severus and the New Forum (beginning of the 3rd century AD). Seriously damnaged by earthquakes in the 4th century, occupied by the Vandals in the following century, the city had a last period of flowering in the 6th century, under the kingdom of the emperor Byzantine Justinian. Inhabited up to the 10th century, then it was abandoned. Brought to light in the 20th century by Italian archaeologists, the city it is one of the most interesting sites of the Roman Mediterranean. In 1994 the new Museum has been inaugurated.
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