![]() The history of Cyrene is the same history that befell much of the ancient world: one empire conquering another.Ĭonsidered one of the most important Classic Greek sites outside of Greece, second perhaps only to Leptis Magna, in 1982 the ruins of Cyrene were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, who deemed it "one of the most impressive ruin complexes in the entire world," and credit modern knowledge of Hellenic sculpture to the Cyrenic ruins. It was at this point that this once glorious city was abandoned and eventually forgotten. An important city under first the Greeks and then the Romans, it was a target of the Arab conquest of 642-3. Named after a spring, Kyre, which the Greeks consecrated to Apollo, the city was the seat of a famous school of philosophy in the third century B.C.E., founded by Aristippus, a disciple of Socrates.Ĭyrene became one of the great intellectual centers of the classical world. It lies in a lush valley in the Jebel Akhdar uplands. It gave eastern Libya the classical name 'Cyrenaica' that it has retained to modern times. ![]() * Name as inscribed on World Heritage List.Ĭyrene (Greek Κυρήνη, Kurene) was an ancient Greek colony in present-day Libya, the oldest and most important of the five Greek cities in the region. ![]()
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