Libyan Coastal Highway

Libyan Coastal Highway
Highway system
Transport in Libya

The Libyan Coastal Highway (Arabic: الطريق الساحلي الليبي‎‎), formerly the Litoranea Balbo, is a highway that is the only major road that runs along the entire east-west length of the Libyan Mediterranean coastline. It is a section in the Cairo–Dakar Highway #1 in the Trans-African Highway system of the African Union, Arab Maghreb Union and others.

Built under the rule of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in colonial Italian Libya in the 1930s, it was named Via Balbia' (or Litoranea Balbo) in honour of governor-general Italo Balbo, but renamed to "Libyan Coastal Highway" after independence and enlarged.

In the 2011 Libyan civil war the highway was a strategic and symbolic element, as the main route through the contested coastal region between Sirte and Benghazi.

In March 1937, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini made a state visit to Italian Libya to open this new military and civilian highway, built by governor-general Italo Balbo. When Balbo died in 1940 in a plane crash, the Italian government named the 1822 kilometer road Via Balbia in his honour. It was used to improve the economy and viability of the Italian colony of Libya.

Italians constructed also a minor road parallel to the coastal one starting from Marj through Marawa, to Lamluda, and it is 143 km (89 mi) long.

The road was built from the Tunisian border to the Egyptian border and was extended in 1940 by the Via della Vittoria inside western Egypt. According to historian Baldinetti the construction was done to give work to more than 10,000 Libyan Arabs.

...
Wikipedia