www.sfgate/com One day next spring, for four minutes and four seconds, Libya will be the best place on Earth.

As the world turns on March 29, the shadow of the moon will blot out the sun in a solar eclipse that will sweep from Brazil in the west to Mongolia in the east. The optimal viewing position is deep in Libya's eastern Sahara desert, starting at 10:50 a.m. local time. The Libyans all but promise in advance the weather will be perfect, and a number of the eclipse tours advertise trips to Libya's many other wonders.

This will be a challenge for the country's travel industry, which is struggling to establish itself as Libya emerges from decades of international sanctions imposed because of its support for terrorist acts and lifted after it renounced its nuclear weapons program.

After the United States allowed Americans to travel there again in 2004, the country hoped to start seeing as many as a million visitors a year -- up from 350,000 annually, according to the Associated Press -- but Libya is still a long way from being able to handle a significant influx of sightseers.

Despite its limits, the country offers much for travelers with a liking for ruins and curiosity about the fascinating historical crosscurrents in the Mediterranean basin. Over time, Libya has been the real estate of Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Persians, Eastern Christians, Vandals, Ottomans and Italians, among numerous others, and virtually all of them left their mark on the landscape.

Roman remains

Most of what's worth seeing is outside of Tripoli. When American travel resumed to Libya, the first reports focused on Leptis Magna, largest of the three cities that gave rise to the region's ancient name, Tripolitania, as well as the modern name of the capital, a short drive away.

Here and elsewhere in Libya, the sands of time have proved to be effective preservatives. In its day, Leptis Magna was an important outpost of the Roman Empire. Two millennia ago, the inland region of northern Africa was lusher, and northern Libya sent important commodities to the mother country across the Mediterranean, including grain and olive oil, which was as important to the local economy then as petroleum is today. But the city suffered major destruction in a huge earthquake that devastated the region in 365 A.D.

The size of Leptis Magna is astounding. It's easy to imagine tens of thousands of people living here -- shopping, bathing, worshiping, socializing in the large public spaces. A huge hippodrome away from the main city was the site of chariot races, and a huge amphitheater seated thousands of theatergoers.

The Severan Forum is edged with arcades, while pieces of ancient columns and fist-sized chips of ornamental carving lie in organized heaps awaiting future restoration. There are traces of Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Byzantine occupation. According to the site guide who accompanied us, an inventory of the remains has just been completed, but restoration of what's been uncovered and excavations of what is as-yet buried would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Among the best-restored areas are the public baths, ornately decorated with colorful tiles and statuary. In Roman style, bathhouses were divided into separate rooms with pools of hot and cool water, while a complicated plumbing system fed the bathhouses and public latrines and piped waste out to sea.

West of the capital, Sabratha occupies a beautiful setting, cascading gently down hills to the sea. There, too, ornate baths have been unearthed. An enormous theater seated 15,000 and featured a three-story backstage. Our guide told us his father had once seen Benito Mussolini appear at a rally there in the 1930s, when Libya was still an Italian colony -- thus providing a mere three degrees of separation from the Italian fascist dictator to me and my tour mates.

Eastern treasures

More fascinating ruins awaited us in the eastern part of Libya, near the Egyptian border. Known in antiquity as Cyrenaica, the region was dominated by the Greek city of Cyrene, sited in the cooler inland hills, and Apollonia, its seaside sister city whose seaport disappeared entirely in the same earthquake that devastated Leptis Magna.

Cyrene's extensive grounds include temples, baths, houses and a large agora, edged by the remains of shops. Statues, many of them headless, dot the extensive complex, and a necropolis -- tombs dug into the hillsides -- reserved the best views for the richest corpses.

Our guide there, Fadhl Ali Muhammad, was once the curator of antiquities in the region, and by the way he slung his arm over an ancient torso in the museum, it was clear he was on familiar terms with everything that had been unearthed to date. He pointed to an amphitheater on a distant hillside, saying it could seat 5,000 and that it had just been uncovered the year before. Other unexcavated mounds around it indicated many more treasures awaiting discovery.

The most impressive structure at Cyrene was the enormous, partially restored Temple of Zeus, larger than the Parthenon. Once it was the site of a statue of the leading Greek deity, of which all that remains today are a couple of stone fingertips, with carefully carved nails and cuticles, each bigger than my head. They're on display at the museum. In a nearby case is a life-size head of Zeus attributed to Phidias, the greatest ancient Greek sculptor.

As in other places in Libya, security here appeared lax, with only a chain-link fence around the entire site and a single guard on view. Moreover, like most places we had seen, it was nearly deserted -- a group of visiting Egyptian adolescents more intent on each other than the antiquities on view climbed up and over 2,500-year-old stone structures.

At some sites, mosaics that belong in museums were left where they were uncovered, open to the elements and potential damage from tourists' shoes. Pilferage is a constant problem; so is adequate preservation. Some sites had a caretaker on view, but few guards were evident anywhere. Many sites are being excavated not by Libyans, but by foreign archaeologists, who have begun trickling back into Libya now that sanctions have been lifted.

Desert pleasures

A long drive through the desert, over well-paved roads crossing scrubland in various colors of brown and dun into which the occasional flocks of camels blend in, leads to the old Ottoman desert city of Ghadames, a photogenic complex of contiguous mud-brick buildings that is now a UNESCO heritage site. Like Leptis Magna, it deservedly received a lot of the early attention from American travelers.

En route we stopped at two important qasrs, granaries where farmers stored grain and olive oil for sale to traveling merchants in caravans plying the region centuries ago. The larger one, in Nalut, still had the huge old press and replicas of straw baskets used to sieve pulp out of the valuable olive oil.

Before dusk, we went in four-wheel-drive vehicles out into the desert, where we finally saw dunes.

In a hokey and totally delightful encounter, we watched Tuareg men doing folk dances as women beat out the rhythms on various types of drums. Meanwhile, other men gave us cup after cup of sweetened cardamom tea and pieces of delicious desert bread, baked in sands heated by a small fire and retaining more than a hint of sandy crunch. One man rode a pure white camel that marched in syncopation with the drumming.

We climbed to the windy summit of the nearest dune to watch the sun set over Algeria -- and spent the next day cleaning the sand out of our ears.

History, ancient and recent

Everywhere we went, we saw other Western tourists here and there, but rarely many Libyans. With virtually every foreign occupation, the Libyans got the short end of the stick, so maybe it is understandable -- this is someone else's history, not theirs.

Less understandable is the litter. Sandy beaches and historic sites are covered with plastic bottles, cans and picnic remains; plastic bags are caught in treetops; empty lots and even stretches of desert miles from anywhere are piled high with wrecked vehicles and home appliances. At historic sites, trashcans are rare and overflowing. Tourism officials know it's bad for business, but apparently haven't figured out yet how to tackle it.

Modern Tripoli presents other challenges. Huge posters of Libya's eccentric and autocratic leader, Col. Moammar Khadafy, are omnipresent, peering across traffic jams. The new public architecture is bland and functional, while many homes and stores and apartment buildings are little more than cement-block boxes.

One exception to the drabness is the new Corinthia Bab Africa hotel, with its striking architecture and opulently furnished rooms. The expansive lobby is the most cosmopolitan place we saw in Libya -- men and women in tailored European clothes or traditional Arab robes huddling together doing oil deals. When I told the Maltese concierge that the plumbing in my bathroom was behaving strangely, he answered, "Madam, in this country, everything is strange, starting at the top."

Old and new also blend in the capital's small Old City, with its narrow streets and Italianate architecture. Shops feature stylish clothes, and restaurants are filled -- there's even a bookstore that stocks works in English. The adjacent market appears like any souk in an Arab country, with rows of shops selling gold jewelry and spices and household goods being shaped noisily by skilled metal smiths sitting in the alleyways. Yet, uncharacteristically for a souk, there's little bargaining, and few shopkeepers try to lure shoppers into their stores.

Tripoli also boasts the fine Jamahiriya Museum, with statues and artifacts and exquisite mosaics taken from the sites of ancient cities. Many of the mosaics were made using the intricate style perfected by artisans in Alexandria, Egypt, in which the individual tiles are no bigger than a 4-year-old's thumbnail. For those who like their history a little more recent, tucked away in a corner is Khadafy's old Volkswagen Beetle, allegedly the one the Libyan leader was driving in the 1950s when he plotted the army coup that ousted King Idris.

One drawback: The museum signs on the displays were only in Arabic, not in any Western language. By prior arrangement, the museum provided us with an English-speaking guide, a charming young woman whose good humor unfortunately outstripped her capacity to explain what we were seeing. We had similar problems elsewhere, although a few museums and historical sites had signs in English.

Language difficulties didn't stop Libyans from trying to communicate with us. On one internal flight, I sat next to a 30-something man who bravely trotted out his schoolboy English. He told me he had a shop that sold stoves and refrigerators, so I wrote out the phrase "home appliances" for him. He asked me how old I was, and I told him I was about his mother's age. "No," he said. "You good. My mother, 14 kids. Not good."

For Libyans, oil makes this a comfortable country, even if Khadafy's personal brand of socialism saps some of the energy out of public life. Everyone seems to be paid the same amount -- the bus driver, the college lecturer, the policeman we were required to have accompanying us on our tour bus. But enterprise is raising its head, now that Libya is putting the era of sanctions behind it.

And on March 29, the sun will shine on Libya in a most unusual way.

If you go

Getting there

Individual travel to Libya is highly restricted, and until the country enhances tourist facilities, the best ways to go are on a land-based tour or a cruise ship, especially if you can't read Arabic. The tourist season is October to April.

Distant Horizons, Long Beach. (800) 333-1240, www.distant-horizons.com). This company, which arranged my tour, offers two Libya trips in March, costing $ 5,970 from the East Coast for two weeks.

For cruises that visit Libya, use the cruise link at www.orbitz.com and search by port, or contact your travel agent. For eclipse tour packages, just Google "Libya eclipse."

Note: Tourists to Libya need visas, and since the United States and Libya have not resumed formal relations, the closest place to do so is at the Libyan embassy in Ottawa. Generally, tour companies can handle this for prospective visitors.

The Libyan dinar (about $.75 US) is the standard currency, and dollars can be changed at big hotels or banks. There are no internationally linked ATM machines, and Western credit cards cannot be used.

For more information

Lonely Planet's Libya guide is generally reliable and most easily available. The country itself does little to promote tourism, but general Web sites with tourist information include touri.st/libya and www.brookes.ac. uk/worldwise (click "Select Country" and enter "Libya").