Reclaiming a vanishing colonial heritage

Bearing the physical and psychological traces of colonisation, war and reconstruction, Libya's second city of Benghazi is a city that never gives up. Since 2014, its historic centre has been severely damaged, first by civil war, then by demolition. 

In March 2023, bulldozers moved through the sea-facing Italian quarter and large sections of the historic centre were razed by Eastern Libya-based authorities (which operate independently from the capital Tripoli).  

The demolitions removed entire blocks, including well-known colonial-era landmarks such as the Berenice Theatre, along with markets and stretches of the corniche, the Italian-era fish market and a commercial building known as the "Saqrasioni Building", likely a local pronunciation of the Italian word Assicurazioni (insurance).

At the edge of this empty zone where parts of the Italian city once stood is the Barah Cultural Centre, one of very few dedicated art spaces in Benghazi. "It's like sitting in Rome's Piazza Navona, but empty," says Jawad Elhusuni, founder of JEA Architects and a lecturer at the Libyan International University, Benghazi.

For Elhusuni, the choice of this space for "Post-Colonial Reclamations", an exhibition he curated centred on the heritage of colonial urbanism, was a no-brainer. The show presents research, maquettes, installations and photographs that treat the city's fractured architectural history as material for reflection and renewal. Architects, students, and artists in the exhibition engage with Benghazi's Italian colonial architecture and explore how it can be reinterpreted today.

Critical restoration

Elhusuni has been studying colonial-era buildings for more than a decade. In 2014, his studio renovated Piazza Cagni, a square originally built to honour Italian admiral Umberto Cagni, under a brief from the Ministry of Culture to restore it. "It was an imperial square named after an admiral to celebrate his military success," he says. "I was left wondering, why are we re-celebrating this a hundred years later?"

For him, the solution was to restore critically. Instead of Roman travertine or Carrara marble, the square was rebuilt with North African granite and limestone. "It was a way to bring the native Libyan language into the project," he says. This kind of unconventional, measured intervention became the seed for the exhibition's concept: reclamation. 

The exhibition is organised around the idea that erasing the colonial past does no good; rather, it's important to read with objectivity what was done, work with it and reframe the traces left behind to the benefit of the population inhabiting the city today. 

This attitude responds to the variety of opinions Benghazians hold towards these colonial buildings: "While some people want them gone, some others want them preserved," Elhusuni says. 

Elhusuni points out that, when speaking of colonialism, even language carries contradictions. In Arabic, he cautions, the word for colonialism is استعمار (istimār), which shares a root with "to build". This reflects how, for some Libyans, the colonial period remains associated with construction, modernisation and infrastructure, while for others—especially in the Benghazi area, which was historically a hotbed of resistance—the memories of occupation and violence remain. The show aims to make space for both readings. 

Another voice in the field, the cultural foundation Libyan Heritage House (LHH), is documenting the history and loss of Benghazi's colonial architecture systematically. LHH maps and archives architecture across Libya, drawing on academic sources, archival film, and discarded family photographs. 

In Benghazi, their work highlights two main phases of colonial architecture: the decorative, neo-Moorish and art-deco-influenced buildings of the 1920s, and the rationalist modernism of the 1930s. The earlier phase appears in municipal halls and the governor's palace; the latter in monumental civic buildings such as the Benghazi Cathedral. 

"These structures once dominated the skyline," note Sarah Shennib and Sharon Rodwell from LHH. "Today, many of those markers are gone or altered." Shennib and Rodwell note that the damage goes beyond the demolitions of 2023, encompassing decades of neglect, crude reconstructions and the slow erosion of the smaller civic fabric—shops, schools, annexes—that give the city its texture. 

LHH is working towards an in-depth catalogue of heritage sites across the country, using high-resolution photography and drone surveillance to map and monitor change over time.

Meanwhile, the works currently on display at Barah respond to this kind of documentation. Haya Noureddin, a young architect and artist, proposed "The Floral Station", a project that revives the old Bengasi Stazione by decorating it with flowers. "Living in Benghazi, these colonial buildings were always part of my everyday landscape. They’re beautiful, but they are so heavy with painful meanings,” she says.

Another student at the Libyan International University in Benghazi, Raneem Ben Fadhl, overlaid the old tracks of an Ottoman-era map of 1904 and the Italian 1963 map on present streets so the vanished lines can be read again. The Ottoman map makes visible the first quarry–to–harbour line; Italian maps show expansion and reorientation; the modern plan shows the dominance of road transport and the disappearance of rail. 

"Older visitors often recognised certain areas and even traced old train lines, sharing memories of how the routes once connected different parts of the city," she said. "For younger visitors, it was more about exploration. It was interesting to see how the same map could spark both nostalgia and discovery, depending on the viewer's generation and familiarity with the city's past."

Preserving colonialism without celebrating it

Shennib from LHH, who has written on Libyan urban history, says the March 2023 demolitions produced a rupture in civic memory. The recent destruction of the Italian-era Benghazi Fish Market and the beautiful 1920s Berenice Theatre are cases in point: both were razed with surprising speed and with minimal consultation from the authorities. 

"The surprising loss of these irreplaceable structures of cultural significance was particularly traumatic for Benghazi residents," she says. "Libya lacks an enforceable system to protect 20th-century buildings, and without classification and legal status, structures can be demolished overnight."

Shennib stresses the need for legal frameworks and capacity building: documentation, yes, but also classification, protection orders, and trained teams to manage conservation. She points to Morocco and Tunisia, where local bodies have conserved cinemas and Art Deco districts, showing that colonial-era buildings can be adaptively reused without endorsing past violence. 

LHH reminds us that the memory of colonial violence in eastern Libya runs deep; the pacification campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s left mass trauma. For LHH, the point is not to celebrate colonialism, but rather to preserve evidence so the past can be studied and the city understood.

That distinction between preservation and celebration is the thread that runs through "Post-Colonial Reclamations". Elhusuni believes exhibitions like this are crucial because Libya has few public spaces for reflection. "We are an oral culture. Art has often been expressed through poetry and storytelling, but I believe in the power of galleries and art spaces, especially today."

For Elhusuni, who returned to Benghazi in 2024 after a decade in Dubai, the show has a personal component: "In the United Arab Emirates I was constantly waiting for the situation back home to get better," he says. "Coming back and doing this show was a way of reclaiming my place, too."