page_title: Libyan Coastal Highway
section_title: Italian Libya
hierarchical_section_title: Libyan Coastal Highway / History / Italian Libya
caption_attribution_description: English: On a map of Commons File:Rete ferroviaria Libia Italiana.png about railways in Italian Libya I have added in orange the "Via Balbia", a coastal road built by the Italian government from Tunisia to Egypt. I have added data with my software.
context_page_description: 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.
  Built under the rule of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in colonial Italian Libya in the 1930s, it was named Via Balbia' in honour of governor-general Italo Balbo, but renamed to "Libyan Coastal Highway" after independence and enlarged.
  In the 2011 Libyan civil war the highway was a strategic and symbolic element, as the main route through the contested coastal region between Sirte and Benghazi.
context_section_description: In March 1937, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini made a state visit to Italian Libya to open this new military and civilian highway, built by governor-general Italo Balbo. When Balbo died in 1940 in a plane crash, the Italian government named the 1822 kilometer road Via Balbia in his honour. It was used to improve the economy and viability of the Italian colony of Libya.
  The Italians also constructed a minor road parallel to the coastal road, starting from Marj through Marawa, to Lamluda which is 143 km (89 mi) long.
  The road was built from the Tunisian border to the Egyptian border and was extended in 1940 by the Via della Vittoria inside western Egypt. According to historian Baldinetti the construction was done to give work to more than 10,000 Libyan Arabs.
  Near the middle of the road, the border of Italian Tripolitania and Italian Cyrenaica was marked by a Marble Arch, named Arch of Fileni. It was created by the Italian architect Florestano Di Fausto.  There was an inscription at the top of the arch which read: Alme Sol, possis nihil urbe Roma visere maius (Latin for "Oh kind Sun, may you never look upon a city greater than Rome"). The "Arch of Fileni" was demolished in 1970 by the new coup d'état revolutionary regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
  A railway was planned for the central section of the Litoranea Balbo parallel to the road, to connect Tripoli and Benghazi but little had been built before the outbreak of the Second World War stopped construction.
caption: Course of the Litoranea Balbo and Libyan railways
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