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Cyrene stands on the fertile Jebel Akhdar plateau above the Mediterranean in modern eastern Libya, roughly 200 kilometres east of Benghazi. According to tradition recorded by Herodotus and Pindar, the city was founded around 631 BCE by settlers from the island of Thera (Santorini), led by Aristotle's ancestor Battus — making it one of the earliest and most successful Greek colonial foundations in North Africa.
The city flourished as the capital of Cyrenaica, exporting grain, horses, and above all silphium, a now-extinct medicinal plant so valuable that it appeared on Cyrenean coinage. Cyrene produced notable philosophers including Aristippus, founder of the Cyrenaic school, and the poet Callimachus, librarian at Alexandria. After passing through Ptolemaic and then Roman control, it remained a major provincial centre until earthquakes and Arab conquest diminished its importance.
"Cyrene, a city of Libya, lies on the sea-coast; it is the fairest of all cities in Libya, and is built on a hill with a spring of good water flowing from the middle of it."
— Herodotus, Histories IV.158, on Cyrene in Cyrenaica (c. 430 BCE)
Archaeological remains spread across a wide area include the Sanctuary of Apollo (with a temple rebuilt under Roman emperors), the agora, the enormous necropolis with monumental tombs cut into the hillside, the Caesareum, baths, and a theatre. Excavations began in the 19th century and continue intermittently; many finds are housed in the Cyrene Museum at Shahhat.
Cyrene forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Archaeological Site of Cyrene" (inscribed 1982, extended as part of the Cyrene-Ptolemais-Apollonia group).
