Originally built as an Italian army base before and during World War II, the barracks at Bab al-Azizia passed through British hands in 1948 before being rebuilt by King Idris. Gaddafi transformed it in the 1980s with the help of foreign contractors into something far more elaborate: a sprawling compound with his private residence, military barracks commanded by his sons, a mosque, a football pitch, a swimming pool, and a communications center. Underground tunnels connected the buildings and reportedly stretched as far as the Mediterranean coast, 3.2 kilometers away. Despite the scale, U.S. intelligence reports published via WikiLeaks described the compound as 'not lavish in any way compared with the ostentation of the Gulf-oil-state families.' Gaddafi preferred his Bedouin-style tent to any palace, though his version came with climate control.

Bab al-Azizia first drew international fire on 8 May 1984, when the National Front for the Salvation of Libya launched a coup attempt at the compound. It failed. Two years later, on 15 April 1986, the compound became the primary target of a U.S. bombing raid authorized by President Ronald Reagan in retaliation for the Libyan government's role in the West Berlin discotheque bombing. Nine U.S. Air Force F-111s were assigned to strike the compound. Gaddafi escaped -- tipped off by warnings from the Maltese and Italian prime ministers that unauthorized aircraft were heading south over Maltese airspace. He claimed his fifteen-month-old adopted daughter Hanna was killed; after the compound's capture in 2011, documents suggested she may have survived and become a doctor. In defiance, Gaddafi erected a monument on the grounds: a giant left-handed fist crushing a U.S. fighter jet. He would use that sculpture as a backdrop for speeches for the next twenty-five years.

When the Libyan Civil War erupted in 2011, NATO airstrikes targeted Bab al-Azizia repeatedly as a command-and-control center. By August, during the Battle of Tripoli, the compound had become one of the last loyalist strongholds in the capital. On 23 August, the guards surrendered. Rebel fighters poured in, vandalizing the statue of the fist, ransacking Gaddafi's bedroom -- one was filmed by Sky News wearing the dictator's clothes. Gaddafi and his family were gone, having already fled to Sirte. Within weeks the compound was opened to the public. Tripoli's Friday market set up shop among the ruins. On 17 October, bulldozers began tearing down the outer walls, though they stopped short of leveling everything. By February 2012, much of Bab al-Azizia lay in rubble. Some families, unable to afford housing elsewhere, moved into the wreckage.

Proposals emerged to demolish what remained and build a public park, a place to be 'enjoyed by people of Tripoli and guests,' as one official put it. The symbolism was pointed: the most fortified private space in the country, a compound designed to keep Libyans out, would become open ground for anyone to enter. But Libya's post-revolution instability has left those plans unrealized. Parts of Bab al-Azizia still stand in disrepair, a crumbling monument to a regime that spent decades building walls and tunnels against the very people it claimed to serve. The fist that once crushed a model fighter jet lies toppled. The tent is gone.