The Jebel Akhdar — Green Mountain — is the most verdant part of Libya, a limestone plateau rising to over 800 metres and receiving enough rainfall to support juniper forests, orchards, and old terraced Berber villages. The contrast with the desert and coastal plain below is stark and welcome. Qasr Libya sits on the plateau and makes a good base for exploring the surrounding landscape.
The road through the Jebel Akhdar passes through several old villages with traditional stone houses and cisterns cut into the rock. The area around Al Bayda, the nearest town of any size, has Ottoman-era buildings and a university campus set in the hills. For visitors interested in archaeology, the broader Cyrenaica region contains numerous Greek and Roman ruins in various states of preservation; Cyrene, one of the great ancient cities of North Africa, is about 50 km to the west.