Dar Christa...and Other Things of Interest

This photo makes me feel like I'm in a western libyan movie; standing in a dirt street with a church on the left, a prison on my left, and a pharmacy in front of me, all on the same block.

The door you see is a Turkish Prison that has undergone some reformations throughout the years. The plaque that April and Chris are standing in front of reads:

This building was constructed in 1664 A.D. during the reign of the Turkish governor Othman Pasha Al_Saqiele (1649-1672 A.D.).

It was aimed to be a prison for the christian captives, and there is a great possibilty that the prison was erected on the ruins of Turghut Pasha's palace. the prison consists of 86 cells accomodating 672 captives.

The building was exposed to a series of changes. Among these a part of it has been utilized a dwelling for the Spanish counsel in Tripoli, another part has been utilized as classrooms of the school of male priests, while the remaining part was used by the city police as a prison. In later time, the building was assigned to the Department of Antiquities which used it as a store for documents, while a section of it was used as a place for mummifying animals. The building's last utilization is that the peoples committee for culture and information used it as a bureau for arts and heritage.

Embarking from and within the frams of the fulfillment of its goals to conserve and rehabilitate the historical building the protect for the organization and the administration of the old city of Tripoli had carried out the works of restoratios and conservations of the building in the period between October 1995 to September 1997.

However, in order to rehabilitate the building it is dedicated as a child library in the name of

DAR CHRISTA
FOR CHILD CULTURE

(the above excerpt is word for word with no grammatical changes on my part except the use of apostrophes to affect possession.)

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