Its exhibits start in the basement with cave paintings circa 12,000 B.C. that were found deep in the Sahara desert. The exhibits rise in a timeline, retracing the history of Greek and Roman cities before ending on the top floor, which is devoted to Colonel Qaddafi's era. Earlier visitors relate a certain magic emanating from old Tripoli, which linked the Mediterranean to the Sahara caravan trade starting hundreds of years before Christ. Mabel Loomis Todd, an American traveler, described sitting on the roof of the British consulate after nightfall in the early 1900's, watching the moon illuminate the minarets, the domes and the palm trees. The people at the restoration project hope that once major buildings are completed, it will inspire Libyans to reclaim their own property.
House owners can do whatever they want inside, so long as the facades conform with the rest.
The government promised to redo the streets, sewers and electricity, but has not started despite the suspended sanctions. Little new restoration money has been committed, either. The British consulate where Ms. Todd was staying, built in 1774, was one of the public buildings redone and is now a public library. The Church of St. Mary, whose congregation was shrinking even before the large Italian community was expelled after the 1969 revolution, will house a modern art museum. The Jewish population left en masse after the violence directed toward Jews here with the Arab defeat in the 1967 war with Israel, but one yeshiva was rebuilt as a cultural center.