Tripoli under Italian rule

The Grand Hotel of Italian Tripoli, built in the early 1930s

Tripoli was the capital of Italian Libya in the first half of the 20th entury. It was called Tripoli italiana in Italian language and the inhabitants were called Tripolini. Italian Tripoli was under Italian control from 1911 until January 1943: officially it disappeared in 1947 after the Peace Treaty following WWII.

History

During the Italo-Turkish War of 1911, Tripoli was conquered by the Italian Kingdom. The Italian fleet appeared off Ottoman Tripoli in the evening of September 28, 1911: the city was quickly conquered by 1,500 Italian sailors, welcomed by the population

By the 1912 treaty signed in Ouchy, Italian sovereignty was acknowledged by the Ottomans, although the local Caliph was permitted to exercise religious authority. Italy officially granted autonomy after the war, but gradually occupied the region of Tripolitania. Originally administered as part of a single colony, Tripoli and its surrounding province were a separate colony from 26 June 1927 to 3 December 1934, when all Italian possessions in North Africa were merged into one colony called "Italian Libya".

Since 1937 the governor Italo Balbo started a policy of immigration of Italians (mainly farmers) who were called the Ventimilli and some of them settled in the area of Italian Tripoli. So, by the end of 1937, the city has 108,240 inhabitants, including 39,096 Italians. At the start of WWII Italian Tripoli had 111,124 inhabitants of which the Italians were 41,304: 37% of the city's inhabitants. Additionally there were nearly 18,000 Jews in the Tripoli area. Indeed after the Italian occupation of Libya in 1911, the Jews made great strides in education and economic conditions: at that time, there were about 21,000 Jews in the country, the majority in Tripoli. In the late 1930s, Fascist anti-Jewish laws were gradually enforced, and Jews were subject to moderate repression: still, by 1941 -due even to the partial rejection of those laws by governor Italo Balbo- the Jews accounted for a fifth of the population of Tripoli and maintained 44 synagogues.

In 1941 and 1942 Italian Tripoli -according to estimates of the Italian government- reached a temporary population of nearly 150,000 inhabitants, due to the arrival of many Italians from Benghazi and Cyrenaica who took refuge from the British army attacks during WWII. As a consequence Tripoli was in those years -for the first time since the Arab conquest in 643 AD- a city mostly Christian.

Tripoli underwent a huge architectural improvement under Italian rule. The incorporation of Tripoli into metropolitan Italy] the first thing the Italians did was to create in the early 1920s a sewage system (that until then lacked) with water & electrical facilities to all the city and a modern hospital. Furthermore, in the western section of Tripoli was created an industrial area in the 1930s, around a huge tobacco factory (called "Manufattura Tabacchi di Tripoli"), with railway workshops, Fiat Motor works, various food processing plants, electrical engineering workshops, ironworks, water plants, agricultural machinery factories, breweries, distilleries, biscuit factories, tanneries, bakeries, lime, brick and cement works.

Governor Balbo used to say that:

"We Italians found in 1911 a big village of approximately 20,000 inhabitants called Tripoli and now we have in 1940 a modern capital nearly ten times bigger and one of the most developed and vibrant cities of Africa"

In the coast of the province was built in 1937-1938 a section of the Litoranea Balbia, a road that went from Tripoli and Tunisia's frontier to the border of Egypt. The car tag for the Italian province of Tripoli was "TL".

Fiera internazionale di Tripoli (Tripoli International Fair) in 1939

Furthermore the Italians - in order to promote Tripoli's economy - founded in 1927 the Tripoli International Fair, which is considered to be the oldest Trade Fair in Africa. The so-called Fiera internazionale di Tripoli was one of the main international "Fairs" in the colonial world in the 1930s, and was internationally promoted together with the Tripoli Grand Prix as a showcase of Italian Libya.

Indeed the Italians even created the Tripoli Grand Prix, an international motor racing event first held in 1925 on a racing circuit outside Tripoli (it lasted until 1940). Tripoli during the Grand Prix was visited by the elite tourism of the world and had even some "fashion" shops.

The first airport in Libya, the Mellaha Air Base was built by the Italian Air Force in 1923 near the Tripoli racing circuit (actually it is called Mitiga International Airport). Tripoli had even a railway station with some small railway connections to nearby cities, when in August 1941 the Italians started to build a new 1,040 kilometres (646 miles) railway (with a 1,435 mm (56.5 in) gauge, like the one used in Egypt and Tunisia) between Tripoli and Benghazi. But the war -with the defeat of the Italian Army- stopped the construction the next year.

Tripoli was controlled by Italy until 1943 when the provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were captured by Allied forces. The city fell to troops of the British Eighth Army on 23 January 1943. Tripoli was then governed by the British until independence in 1951. Under the terms of the 1947 peace treaty with the Allies, Italy relinquished all claims to Libya.

After WWII the era of international decolonization fostered an exodus of Italians from Tripoli, especially after Libya became independent in 1953. After 1970 the Italian population of the city (called Tripolini) almost disappeared when Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi ordered the expulsion of Italians.

At present, the Libyan Italians are organized in the Associazione Italiani Rimpatriati dalla Libia. The remaining "Tripolini" struggle to get their confiscated properties and even to maintain their Italian cemetery.

Infrastructures & architecture

Since the first years in Italian Tripoli were made many infrastructures by the Italians, even with the participation of the local arab "elite": the most important were the coastal road (called Via Balbia in honor of Italo Balbo after his death in 1940) between Tripoli and Benghazi and the railways Tripoli-Zuara, Tripoli-Garian and Tripoli-Tagiura.

The Cathedral of Tripoli in the 1960s

Other important infrastructures were the enlargement of the port of Tripoli with the addition of a seaplane facility and the creation of the Tripoli airport (later in the 1930s was added another "international" airport in nearby Castel Benito). The first modern hospital in Tripoli was created by the Italians: the "Tripoli Central Hospital" main buildings that are standing now were built during the Italian administration of Libya in the 1910s. It was known then as L'Ospedale Coloniale di Vittorio Emanuele III (or Vittorio Emanuele III Colonial Hospital). The service during those days used to be headed by Italian doctors: notable among them was Tomaso Casoni (1880–1933) who practiced there from 1912 to 1932. He described there a test for diagnosing hydatid disease based on "dermal hypersensitivity", known internationally after him as the Casoni test. The original building is still standing and is occupied by the hospital's surgery department.

Since 1912 the Italian authorities started creating a "city plan", that was one of the first in the world to respect the ancient medieval city called "medina" (without demolitions of old buildings): it was decided to create a new modern city outside the Ottoman walls.

The city of Tripoli underwent a huge transformation in those years, with the creation of new avenues, squares, sea promenades and modern buildings.

From the central square "Piazza Italia", located just south of the old castle and medina, were created huge boulevards (Corso Sicilia, Corso Vittorio Emanuele III, Via Roma, etc.) around which new Italian-style modern buildings were developed. In Tripoli was built the biggest catholic cathedral of north Africa: the Tripoli Cathedral. Italian government even restructured the ancient Arch of Marcus Aurelius. Indeed immediately after the Italian conquest, this Roman monument received conservation and restoration work from the Italian administration, while the zone around the arch was reorganized by the Italian architect Florestano Di Fausto in the early 1930s.

Governor Balbo gave Di Fausto in 1938 the task of designing the city plan of Italian Tripoli, and Di Fausto -nominated by Balbo chef of the "Commission for Urban Protection and Esthetics" with the main task of designing Tripoli's city plan- started to produce a stream of projects for Libya's capital: there the architect outlined the plan of Piazza Castello (the area around the Red Castle) and of the square around the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, in the Medina. Moreover, he erected public buildings, churches, markets, hotels, totaling fifteen works in few years.

"Piazza Italia" with Italian-renaissance style fountain and buildings

His masterpiece in Tripoli is the multifunctional center Al Waddan (hotel, swimming pools, casino, theater), characterized by a long row of arches parallel to today's Sharia al Fatah promenade: it was one of the predecessors of "modern malls". Indeed the actual Al Waddan opened in 1936 as the Uaddan Hotel & Casino, just east of the Grand Hotel Tripoli (now destroyed as it was when originally built in 1925). Historically it was the grandest hotel in Tripoli and was referenced by an American journalist as being "the Waldorf Astoria of Tripoli" and was also named "a jewel of modern African architecture". It contained a casino and a 500 seat theatre.

In all these works, the architect Di Fausto resumed his Romano-Greek experience, mixing with great virtuosity arabisant and novecento elements. Even the modern futuristic "Church of Saint Francis" in downtown Tripoli was another work of art of him.

The same residence of Governor Balbo was to become after WWII the "Royal Palace" of the Libya's king. Balbo even promoted the creation of an international airport at "Castel Benito" (now called Tripoli International Airport), connected by the first international flights in Africa to Italy and to Ethiopia's Addis Abeba.

The Red Castle Museum was established in 1919, when the colonial Italians in Libya converted a section of the Tripoli's ancient castle to a museum to house many of the archaeological artifacts scattered across the country since prehistoric times. The square around the castle was designed in the thirties by architect Di Fausto as "Piazza Castello" and was integrated with nearby "Piazza Italia" and the disappeared "Lungomare Conte Volpi".

In 1939 was created the 7 October Stadium, a grass football stadium called "Stadio Comunale di Tripoli" and based in the center of the city. The stadium was initially made for 5,000 people and was used even for athletism and cyclism sports. It was the only football stadium in Tripoli before the June 11 Stadium was built in the 1970s.

The "Palazzo del Governatore" of Balbo, remodeled as Royal Palace in the 1950s

The Piazza Italia (now called Martyr's Square) featured on one side a wide avenue leading towards the seafront with two tall pillars. On top of the pillars still there are an iron-cast, miniature wooden ship on the norther corner, while the other one features a horseback rider. On the Piazza's other side there was the Teatro Miramare, called later Royal Miramare Theatre: it used to be located across from the Red Castle Museum, but it was demolished by Gaddafi's government after the 1960s to create space for large demonstrations.

Another important building demolished by dictator Gheddafi was the Tripoli railway station, built in 1937. It was the only railway station in Africa served by the state-of-the-art "Littorina" (an Italian passenger train that obtained the world record of speed in 1939 with the model FS Class ETR 200).

Additionally, a group of villages for Italians and Libyans were created on the coastal tripolitania around Italian Tripoli during the 1930s. They were like satellite towns and interacted with Tripoli. In 1939 the most important created and populated only by native arabs and berbers were: "El Fager" (al-Fajr, Alba in Italian language), "Nahima" (Deliziosa), "Azizia" (‘Aziziyya, Meravigliosa), "Nahiba" (Risorta), "Mansura" (Vittoriosa), "Chadra" (khadra, Verde), "Zahara" (Zahra, Fiorita), "Gedida" (Jadida, Nuova), "Mamhura" (Fiorente). All the villages in the outskirts of Tripoli since 1939 were connected daily by bus service to the "Stazione centrale autobus" (one of the first central bus stations in north Africa), located in the square of the Tripoli Railway Station.

Gallery

• 
  Lungomare Volpi and Teatro Miramare (1935)
• 
  Monument to the WWI Victory (1935)
• 
  Former "Piazza Cattedrale" (1950)
• 
  Tripoli Castle (1940)
• 
  Italian Cemetery (1950)
• 
  Clock Tower and "Albergo Vittoria" (1935)

See also

• Italian Benghazi
• Italian Libya
• Italian Tripolitania
• Italian settlers in Libya
• Asmara italiana
• Mogadiscio italiana

Bibliography

• Antonicelli, Franco. Trent'anni di storia italiana 1915-1945. Mondadori. Torino, 1961.
• Bertarelli, Luigi Vittorio. Guida d'Italia: Possedimenti e colonie. Touring Club Italiano. Milano, 1929