ARCH OF MARBLE HALO AND LUCIUS VERUS

More commonly known as the arch of Marc Aurèle, it is the only Roman monument in Tripoli. It should be preserved in a tenacious legend that tied its survival to that of the city. All traces of the old Punic and then Roman city are buried under the buildings, mainly in the Bab el-Bahr district. The arc of Marc Aurèle is constructed at the perpendicular intersection of the two main streets of any Roman city: The Cardo maximus, leaving from the harbour, and the Decumanus summus, which connected Monterrey to Leptis Magna and Sabratha and, much farther, Carthage in Alexandria. Financed by a rich magistrate of Oas and inaugurated in 163-164. By the proconsul of Africa, the arc dates from the beginning of the peak period of Oas in the middle of the th century. Entirely constructed in white marble, at a time when marble was very rare in Sabratha, it allows us to think that Oea had surpassed Sabratha and came directly after Leptis Magna in imperial times.

It is a triumphal arch of quadrifons type: with four facades and two perpendicular passages. The niches of two of its facades had beautiful statues, including that of Emperor Lucius Verus, the brother brother of Marc Aurèle. On the north-west façade are sculpted, from bottom to top, families of prisoners, Victoires en flight and the tanks of Apollo and Minerve, the protective gods of Oas.

The bow of Marc Aurèle over the centuries. Contrary to the archaeological remains of Sabratha and Leptis Magna, the arch of Marc Aurèle did not have the pleasure of wandering beneath the sands while waiting for his wake-up by archaeologists, since the ancient Dane was occupied to become the old city of Tripoli that we know today. So his story was told through the stories of Arab or European travellers who failed to report this architectural anachronism. In order to escape the convoitise of an influential character who wanted to reuse his marble, he was transformed into a mosque at least until the th century. At the beginning of the th century, it became the Tripoli Admiralty store where landed and rope were stored. At the end of the th century, shops were erected there and in the th century it served as a drink from a Maltese and became a simple warehouse of this same Maltese tavern. He still had a cinema at the end of Turkish domination, and then the Italians set up a concert hall, before carrying out excavations and restoration of the arc, then buried half in the ground. Italian archaeologists made her his face in 1937. The monument, officially protected, now has a well-deserved rest.

Next to the arc (on the terrace of Al-Attar restaurant), the triangular pediment of a temple discovered not far from there, dating from the th century and dedicated to the genius of the Roman colony of Oas, will be distinguished.