Archaeological missions from America, Italy, and the United Kingdom have excavated in Cyrene for more than a century. Settled by Greek colonists toward the end of the 7th century B.C., it remained an active Graeco-Roman city of distinctively Hellenic character until the time of the Islamic conquest (A.D.
1Cyrene, a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) in eastern modern Libya, was the leading city of the Libyan Pentapolis.
