The Model of the Medina of Tripoli: a Unique Contribution to the Understanding the Mediterranean Cities

The model presented at the colloquium The Mediterranean Medina recreates the state of the urban fabric of the medina of Tripoli in 1911, on the eve of the Italian occupation of Libya. This choice stems from the fact that the urban structure of the medina, represented in the plan by Fehmi Bey in 1910, was at the time, substantially intact. The walls, bastions and the castle delimited a compact fabric of the pre-industrial city grown around the collective institutions, typical of the Maghrebian arab-islamic urban culture: jami, masjid, madrasa, zawiya, suq , funduq and hammam. The waterfront and the port, where the fortifications are less substantial generated the directions of the network of the principal urban courses. The research that has resulted in the model has two objectives. First, the study of the urban structure of the traditional city, the physical and dimensional characters of the buildings and the system of monuments and open spaces. Second, to distinguish the characters and the quality of the urban transformations, by comparing the historical medina, as it was at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the contemporary one. The choice of creating a model, to better understand these issues, stems from the belief that the study of the city, especially that of the traditional Mediterranean world, should take into consideration not only the plan of the city but also its volumes, the tridimensional characters and the form of its prospect as a significant and relevant expression of an urban identity. The volumetric representation of the Mediterranean urban fabric, compared to its representation in plan, takes into account and thus explains, in a more direct and truthful manner, relevant characters. These consist in the congruence between the settlement and the morphology of the ground: • the weight, in terms of extension, thickness and compactness, of the urban centre, as a whole, in relation to its suburbs and the natural landscape; • the relative weight, of the different parts of the urban centre, that is, of the collective institutions, the monuments and minarets, the residential areas and the open and public spaces; • the role of certain architectural works in the configuration of the urban image and the skyline, such as the relevance of the traditional defensive system of walls, fortresses, bastions as well as minarets, etc.; • the characters and quality of the urban spaces as distinctive elements of the Mediterranean city.