← Back to the mapThe Arch of Septimius Severus at the ruins of Leptis Magna, Libya
Modern photograph of the Arch of Septimius Severus, Leptis Magna · Wikimedia Commons

Leptis Magna

Africa Proconsularis · Roman province·Libya·Founded 1000 BCE (Phoenician)

Phoenician foundation, later home of emperor Septimius Severus. Its 2nd-century monumental core was still being planned in 117 CE.

An uninhabited UNESCO World Heritage site on Libya's coast, well preserved, and reopening to visitors as Libya's tourism slowly recovers.

Excavation history

1816
Hanmer George Warrington (British consul-general) with artist Augustus Earle — Obtained permission from the local Ottoman governor to remove dozens of columns, capitals, and inscribed slabs from Leptis Magna for shipment to England.
1920s-1930s
Italian Antiquities Service, including Pietro Romanelli — Italian colonial-era excavation, beginning in earnest from 1911 and intensifying in the 1920s, uncovered most of the site's main monuments, including the Augustan theatre, the amphitheatre, the Hadrianic baths, and the Severan forum.

Notable finds

Zliten Mosaic
Zliten Mosaic
Lifted from a seaside villa near Leptis Magna in 1913, this floor mosaic packs gladiatorial duels, animal hunts, and condemned men facing beasts into one continuous strip. A hairstyle on one figure and its violent imagery both point to the Flavian decades, decades before this map's 117 CE snapshot.
National Archaeological Museum, Tripoli (Al-Saraya al-Hamra)
Statue of Ceres Augusta with the features of Livia
Carved for a small shrine added to the theatre's colonnaded walk in 35 or 36 CE, this cult statue gives the grain goddess Ceres the face of Livia, Augustus's widow and Tiberius's mother — a common flattery in provincial imperial portraiture.
National Archaeological Museum, Tripoli
Statue of Claudius
Carved around 50 CE during Claudius's reign, this portrait statue of the emperor was recovered from Leptis Magna's Old Forum district, the city's original civic heart before its later Severan expansion.
National Archaeological Museum, Tripoli
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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →