Cyrene

Cyrene is in Libya, a country in North Africa.

It was a big city long, long ago. Now it is in ruins. Rows of stone columns still stand in the grass.

Cyrene lies inland in the Jebel Akhdar district of eastern Libya, back from the Mediterranean Sea. Settlers from the Greek island of Thera, today called Santorini, founded it, by tradition in 631 BC.

Cyrene grew into one of the most important cities of the ancient Greek world, and later a capital of the Romans. UNESCO says a thousand years of history is written into its ruins. Today the remains of its temples, baths, theater, market squares and tombs are a World Heritage Site.

Cyrene lies in the Jebel Akhdar district of eastern Libya; ICOMOS describes the early city as a trading center in the interior, back from the sea. It was a colony of Greeks from Thera (Santorini) led by Battos, founded by tradition in 631 BC in a region where Carthaginian influence was strong.

UNESCO calls it one of the principal cities of the Hellenic world, Romanized and a great capital until the earthquake of 365, and says a thousand years of history is written into ruins that have been famous since the 18th century. It was inscribed in 1982. ICOMOS singles out three great monumental zones, the sanctuary of Apollo, the Acropolis and the Agora, plus the Temple of Zeus and one of the most extensive and varied cemeteries of the ancient world.

Look at the long row of grooved stone columns.

Behind the grass is a tall stone wall. Around the old city are many old tombs.

In the photo, a long row of tall stone columns with grooves, called fluting, runs along the left. Across a grassy courtyard stands a wall of big stone blocks with a row of half-columns built into it, and a doorway near its left end. Long shadows from the columns stretch across the grass.

Around the city lies a huge necropolis, a "city of the dead" where people were buried. ICOMOS calls it one of the largest and most varied of the ancient world.

The photo shows a courtyard framed by a long Doric-style colonnade of fluted columns on the left and, opposite, a wall of large ashlar blocks with engaged half-columns and a doorway; its record does not name the building, so it is not identified here.

Beyond the three monumental zones, excavations revealed the importance of the northeastern sector, where the Temple of Zeus stands among Greek-quarter ruins restored in the Augustan period and inhabited until the end of Cyrene's history. ICOMOS ranks Cyrene's necropolis among the most extensive and varied of the ancient world.

Cyrene is a World Heritage Site.

In 2016 it was put on a list of places that need help. That asks people all over the world to help protect it.

UNESCO made Cyrene a World Heritage Site in 1982. In 2016, it put all five of Libya's World Heritage Sites, including Cyrene, on its List of World Heritage in Danger. That list tells the world that a place needs extra help to be protected.

In 1981 ICOMOS reported that parts of Cyrene, such as the Acropolis, had not yet been explored.

Inscribed in 1982 under criteria (ii), (iii) and (vi), Cyrene was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger on 14 July 2016, together with Libya's four other World Heritage sites, because of damage caused by the conflict affecting the country and the threat of further damage.

ICOMOS noted that exploration of the Acropolis, an immense archaeological reserve, had been postponed, and that the site influenced the modern period too: the rediscovery of its ruins in 1705–1706 was a significant date in the history of Neoclassicism.