The Tripoli Grand Prix and the Mellaha Circuit
Tripoli (from 1933): the Mellaha circuit, a 13-km lakeside racetrack with a white concrete tower and grandstands for ten thousand, where the lottery-funded Tripoli Grand Prix ran until 1940 — now under the runways of Mitiga airport.
At a glance
For a few years before the war, the fastest motor race in the world ran along a salt lake outside Tripoli. The Mellaha circuit opened in 1933: more than thirteen kilometres of track around the lake, a white concrete tower over the pits, and grandstands for ten thousand. It was paid for by a national lottery and built to make colonial Tripoli glamorous. Auto Union and Mercedes came to win it; the last race was held in 1940. Nothing of the circuit remains — the runways of Mitiga airport now cover the ground.
Key facts
- First race: 1925, on a circuit outside Tripoli in Italian Tripolitania
- Permanent circuit: opened 1933 at Mellaha, 13.140 km around a salt lake
- Facilities: a brilliant white concrete tower and a grandstand for up to 10,000
- The lottery: run with the Libyan state lottery — tickets at 12 lire, first prize three million
- The cars: Italian marques early on, then Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union from 1935; Hermann Lang won 1937, 1938 and 1939
- Last race: 1940, won by Giuseppe Farina in an Alfa Romeo
- Today: the site is Mitiga International Airport (the former Wheelus base)
History
Racing came to Tripoli in 1925, but the event became famous only when the colonial administration rebuilt it as a spectacle. In 1933 a permanent autodrome opened on the flats of the Mellaha, a salt basin east of the city near Suq al Jum’ah and Tajura. The circuit was fast and long — 13.14 kilometres — and it was tied to the Libyan state lottery: a twelve-lire ticket could return three million lire if it drew the winning car. The lottery filled the prize fund and the grandstands, and made the Tripoli Grand Prix, for a while, the richest race on the calendar. The old story that the results were fixed to serve the lottery is, research suggests, a myth.
The race was a showpiece of the regime’s “Fourth Shore”, staged where a European crowd could watch under the palms. Italian cars won the early runnings; from 1935 the German teams of Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union took over, and when the organisers cut the formula to small 1,500cc voiturettes in 1939, Mercedes still won. Hermann Lang took three years in a row, 1937 to 1939. The final Grand Prix, in 1940, went to Giuseppe Farina in an Alfa Romeo, and the war ended the circuit for good.
What was there
The Mellaha was a purpose-built autodrome, not a road course. Its signature was a tall tower of brilliant white concrete carrying the timing board and clock, rising over a line of low pit and grandstand buildings in the stripped modern manner of the decade. The main straight ran past them along the lake, banked crowds on one side and palms on the other; the track then swung out around the salt flats in long, fast curves.
None of it survives. After the war the site became a military airfield — Wheelus Air Base, and then Mitiga International Airport — and the tower, the stands and the track were built over or erased. The circuit exists now only in photographs and in the record of the races it held.
Before you go
- There is nothing to visit: the circuit is gone, and its ground is an active airport, not open to the public.
- Tripoli and Libya carry serious travel-safety advisories; check your government’s guidance.
- This card is a heritage record of a lost place, not a visitor guide.
Where it was
The Mellaha lay a few kilometres east of central Tripoli, on the coast. The salt basin it ran around is now occupied by Mitiga International Airport, between the districts of Suq al Jum’ah and Tajura.
Nearby
Sources
- Wikipedia, Tripoli Grand Prix — 1925 first race, 1933 permanent circuit (13.140 km), the tower and 10,000-seat grandstand, the lottery and prize money, the German teams and the 1939 voiturette formula, the 1940 final race, and the Mitiga site today.
- Period reporting in L’Afrique du Nord Illustrée and the Mellaha circuit maps on Wikimedia Commons — the grandstand, tower and track layout.
- Cultural Heritage Online, Italian Libya: Architecture, Roads and the Colonial Project of the “Fourth Shore” — colonial context.
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