A Bus Ride into Libya’s Past: Greco-Roman Remains and a stay in Mussolini’s Bedroom

posted on: Oct 25, 2017

By:John Mason/Contributing Writer

As an Anthropologist, my work in Libya aimed to uncover much of that country’s past. It included an account of my journey to one of Libya’s most treasured Greco-Roman archaeological sites, Cyrene, on the eastern coast. The journey blended my personal experience with the ancient history of Libya and the country’s awful exposure to Italian rule in the early 20th century.

In 1968, my wife, Nancy, and I took off to Libya to do anthropology research in an oasis community in the Sahara. I’d read up on the Italian occupation of Libya from 1911-1934. During much of that period, the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, known as Il Duce, (pronounced il Duchay) had ruled over the Italian empire, including Libya. Nancy and I were to brush up against Mussolini’s legacy in a personal way late in 1968.

After my first stay in the Oasis and following Nancy’s introduction to life in Benghazi, we felt we needed a break after several months of intense work, even if only a short one of a few days. We wanted to visit the renowned and stunning Greco-Roman sites in Cyrene and Apollonia (founded in 631 BC), located along the eastern Mediterranean coast of Libya. So we booked a room in the Hotel Cyrene.  In the absence of a car of our own at the time, we hopped on a bus for a few days’ visit into Libya’s classical past.

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During our bus ride, we came face-to-face with some interesting Libyans. Passengers aboard were mostly Bedouin nomads, women, men, and children, some accompanied by a goat and several crates of chickens. They were returning from Benghazi to their tribal homes. So, with chickens clucking and the goat m-a-a-a-ing, we tooled on down the coastal road. Then, Nancy told me that she was feeling sick. I asked if it was the lurching bus that was causing her sickness. She said she thought it might be gastroenteritis, even colitis, both serious stomach ailments. There was nowhere to stop, no pharmacy, no clinic. Helpless, I felt Nancy’s pain as well as my own inability to do anything immediately useful.

We finally arrived in the village of Cyrene. The Hotel Cyrene wasn’t far from the bus stop, from which we slowly trekked across the village square with our bags in tow. It was an old, two-story building, painted all-white and glistening in the early afternoon sun. How welcoming it was!   

But all Nancy could think about was medicine for her stomach and a bed to sleep in.

Sights of Greco-Roman monuments magnificently placed up to the edge of the Mediterranean Sea would have to await us. The hotel staff, on greeting us, saw immediately that Nancy was ill.

They checked our reservation and said that our room was ready. The clerk looked at Nancy again, thinking perhaps that he could cheer her up, saying, “We have a special bedroom for you, Madame—it’s the one Mussolini slept in.”

We were led by the receptionist to this presumed-to-be-famous or infamous bedroom on the second floor. The only thing special about it seemed to be its size, a large space, fit for … well, a king or a dictator, as the case may be. The room was painted grayish-white and had a sole photograph on the wall, Cyrene’s famous sites, but it also had a window looking out over the small village square, which helped to mediate the room’s otherwise drab feeling. An old chandelier with bare bulbs hung from the ceiling, which in the evening revealed the drabness. The bed was an adequately-sized double, sufficient for the then two relatively thin Americans. Perhaps in Mussolini’s time, he would have merited at least a queen or king-sized bed.

Mussolini or Il Duce may have slept at the hotel during an official visit to Libya in 1937, when he commemorated the completion of the mountainous coastal road designed by his Italian countrymen and built with the hard labor of Libyans. There are records of Mussolini’s visit to Cyrene.  The room may not have only been that of Mussolini, but it may have been the perfect fit for Eisenhower, or Montgomery, or Rommel who’d crisscrossed North Africa during World War II—and  it wouldn’t have mattered.

Nancy’s illness required only one thing—a bed, any bed. The hotel staff was sympathetic and went out of their way to please us.

I rushed to the local pharmacy for some medicines for Nancy. I was told that the medication I purchased was tailored precisely to eliminate the kinds of local microbes that had probably caused her gastroenteritis. She gradually got better and two days later we were able to get out into the late, still-warm autumn air and tour the sites. They happen to be some of the best preserved Greco-Roman sites in both Europe and North Africa. So, our bus ride out to Cyrene was both our first and last. Though riding the bus was a good way to meet Libyans close up, it was a tough way to travel, especially with a bad stomach. Mussolini’s bedroom, though of little consequence at that moment, became something to remember long after the bus ride.

In the end, I was happy that Nancy was better and that if Mussolini had in fact slept there, that his sleep had been as restful as ours.