Qasr Libya is a small village about 45 km west of Al Bayda, in the heart of the Jebel Akhdar plateau. Most people who visit come for a single reason: the Byzantine Museum, which holds one of the finest collections of Byzantine floor mosaics in North Africa. Nearly 50 panels, discovered in two sixth-century churches excavated here in the 1950s, are preserved inside — depicting animals, allegorical figures, personifications of cities, and scenes from classical mythology with vivid colour and remarkable detail. The site was the ancient town of Olbia (later renamed Theodorias), and the mosaics place it firmly in the mainstream of late antique Mediterranean culture.
The village itself is small and quiet. The Jebel Akhdar plateau surrounding it is the most fertile part of Libya — juniper forests, old Berber villages, and a climate markedly cooler than the coast. For those interested in ancient North Africa, the broader Cyrenaica region contains a chain of significant Greek and Roman sites, with Cyrene about 50 km to the west.