Gateway to Leptis Magna — the finest Roman city outside Italy, swallowed by sand and sea for a thousand years
Khoms is a Libyan coastal town 130km east of Tripoli whose sole claim to world attention is the proximity of Leptis Magna — one of the most extraordinarily preserved Roman cities on earth, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982. Founded by Phoenicians, enlarged by Augustus, and transformed into one of the empire's great metropolises by the Emperor Septimius Severus (who was born here in 145 AD), Leptis Magna was buried under sand dunes after the Arab conquest and rediscovered by Italian archaeologists in the 20th century. The result is a Roman city frozen in time — the Severan Arch, the Hadr…
Leptis Magna was founded by the Phoenicians as a trading post around 1000 BCE, passed through Carthaginian and Numidian hands before becoming Roman in 46 BCE. The city reached its apogee under the Severan dynasty — the emperor Septimius Severus, born in Leptis in 145 CE, lavished it with the Forum and Basilica that bear his name and the great triumphal arch that still dominates the site. After the Arab conquest in 642 CE the city was abandoned and gradually buried by encroaching sand dunes that, paradoxically, preserved it better than any active maintenance could have.