most of you probably know that the US lifted its travel ban to libya in light of qaddafi becoming all cuddly in the past few months. the new york times showed this past sunday why you might actually want to go there for a vacation: stunning roman ruins in the cities of leptis magna and sabratha. apparently libya is home to some of the best roman ruins outside of italy.

the article also discusses how horribly italy treated libya when it was a colony of theirs.

Although the 20th century has seen the first mass excavations of these Roman cities, over all it has not been kind to Libya, an Italian colony from 1911 to 1943. When Italy entered its Fascist period under Mussolini, the Roman treasures of North Africa were dug up as icons of Italian imperialism.

"The politics of the spade was very much operating in North Africa at that time," says David Mattingly, who teaches Roman archaeology at the University of Leicester. "And it was partly an attempt to disenfranchise the Libyans from their own past and to make the Roman past of Libya an Italian preserve."

A railroad was laid into Leptis in the 1920's (its tracks are still visible) and thousands of workers spent years hauling hundreds of tons of sand and dirt off the ruins.

Indigenous rebellion was brutally suppressed, and ordinary Libyans were not allowed to walk the streets in central Tripoli where Italians lived in grand buildings.

"The Libyans were treated horribly during the colonial period and the resentment still complicates Libya's relations with Italy today," one Western ambassador says. For that reason also, the amazing Roman ruins here are not the source of national pride that a visitor might expect.

it sounds amazing, and i bet it's dirt cheap. because everyone is probably terrified to go to libya. but i bet within ten years, it'll be a hotspot international travel destination. it would be wonderful to go to tunisia, libya and egypt in one extended trip. i really wanted to go to tunisia when i was younger. my grandfather and brother and i played this game where he would quiz us on capitals of north african and middle eastern countries (you see that my family are true partiers) and i always thought it was funny that tunis was the capital of tunisia; i liked it because it was the easiest to remember.