Cyrene, the biggest and most important of Libya's Greek cities  Roman ruins at the port of Leptis have been recently renovated  It is four years since Libya began to re-enter the international world  A mouth-watering array of spices on sale at a market in Tripoli  When the emperor Septimius Severus paraded into Leptis Magna in 203AD the locals erected a ceremonial arch. They dressed it in marble and bronze and slapped on a toadying frieze to flatter him and his family.  When groups turn up at Leptis today their tour buses have to do a U-turn across a dual carriageway and then, reversing on to the highway, take two bites at getting through a narrow gate. What a difference 1,800 years make.  However unimposing the entrance, Leptis is one of the supreme spectacles of the classical world. But Leptis is in Libya and modern Libya doesn't go in for the imposing, even at one of its five World Heritage sites. In fact, if Colonel Gaddafi turned up with Leptis Magna at an Antiques Road Show you can't help wondering whether he wouldn't be one of those whose jaws drop when they hear just how much their item is worth.  It is only in the past four years, since sanctions were lifted, that the country has fully re-entered the international fold. In a land sequestered for as long as Libya was, everything is unfamiliar. At Tripoli airport a sign read: "Partners, not wage workers," which made it sound like John Lewis.  But then there was the first of countless photographs of The Leader, Col Gaddafi, in one of a dozen permutations of desert robes, army uniform and sunglasses. The Leader's collection of shades must match Imelda Marcos's assortment of shoes.  Before I was allowed to leave the airport three "partners" had to shuffle through my passport and two machines X-rayed my luggage. It took a third X-ray to get into the hotel. No, these days Libya doesn't do imposing. But it did once. The country has some of the largest and most magnificent remains of the ancient Mediterranean.  I was with a group of archaeology buffs, folk who dig digs, if not literally, who get a kick from Corinthian capitals. There were 19 of us, travelling with a holiday company that does nothing but arrange trips like this to the ancient world. Our tour, starting and ending in Tripoli, took us the breadth of Libya.  Our average age was 65 and the oldest among us was 82. There were business people, academics, lawyers and civil servants. One had been a judge for the Booker Prize. Some had studied ancient history at university; others discovered their fascination for archaeology on childhood holidays.  Between them they had visited most of the principal sites around the northern shores of the Mediterranean. Now they had come to Africa.  It was an erudite bunch whose erudition was about to be extended by a week in the company of our own lecturer. Three sets of people made this trip, the imperial Romans, the ancient Greeks and the Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University, Bill Manning. An expert on the Roman Empire, he spoke with the freshness and familiarity of someone who had only just got back.  He was both guide and guru. As we picked our way through the stumps of brick that had supported the heated floor of a Roman bathhouse, he cautioned, "Don't trip over the hypocaust pilae!" – not the sort of instruction you get on your average coach tour. Nor would he allow his enthusiasms, or our dawdling, to delay the schedule. "You have to keep going or you will end up as one of the sights of Libya yourself," he called to a straggler at Cyrene, where his voice, which has boomed through a hundred lecture rooms, now reverberated off the stones of the agora.  He would never let the ancients get above themselves. In Tripoli's fine National Museum we stood in front of a statue of a headless Roman ready to offer our admiration. Bill intervened: "It is the indoor variety of the garden gnome, produced by the 10,000. Much more important is the mosaic behind it." And he pointed out the figure of a man standing on a small trolley, being wheeled into an arena to be devoured by lions. "Not sure I would want it on my dining-room floor," he added.  Bill's enthusiasms were infectious. One was the harbour at Leptis. "I can show you any number of theatres and basilica, but I can't show you another Roman harbour. It's unique," he said as he led us out along a mole, the sea to our right. The dock it once protected silted up centuries ago, but the massive stone blocks forming the quay are still there, level and immaculately aligned, and upon them stand the foundations of warehouses and the base of a lighthouse.
In Libya without tourist hordes, Peter Hughes is led to some of the world’s    best preserved Greek and Roman architecture.