FORMER TURKISH PRISON

A plaque in English gives the main information, namely that it is a former gang of Christian slaves built by Othman pasha in the second half of the th century, at the time when Barbarie de Barbarie flourished with the activity of his privateers. There were many slaves in Tripoli: this gang who could contain more than 650 was certainly the largest, but not the only one. Also mentioned is the explanatory plaque, the fact that the privateer Privateer, who with Tripoli to the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, built his palace when he became the governor of the city. Now the building turned the page of its privateer past, and houses a children's library. At the bottom of the courtyard is a pretty Greek Orthodox church built in 1647 and still in service. On the other side of the square, the renovated building also has an explanatory plaque. It was used on 15 April 1907 by the Italians, as the headquarters of the subsidiary in Libya of Banco di Roma, the first bank to have settled in Libya and an instrument of economic penetration in the country, a prelude to the colonial conquest. Once again, it is a banking institution, Libyan this time, serving as an agency at the Umma bank. The latter is indeed the heir of Banco di Roma and thus, as the oldest Libyan bank. We will notice the striking facade of many windows of the building, a European architecture that is far removed from the architectural canons of the old Arab city where the eyes cannot penetrate inside the buildings.