I'll be blogging about what I find in the coming days, but wanted to give you an initial flavour of life in this famous city, which sits on a dusty coastal plain just below a green, almost Tuscan, range of low hills.

BBC: The festive gunfire of Benghazi

By the mid 19th Century thousands of coastal sailing ships were entering the port each year bringing an enormous range of goods to the capital.

BBC: Canary Wharf

We have state-of-the-art equipment in the water that allows us to know very quickly if a tsunami has been generated, and a range of alert mechanisms have been put into place in coastal areas make sure official warnings reach local populations.

UNESCO: Building the Wealth of Nations

The anniversary celebrations over the year range from a hike to St Dogmaels along the same Pembrokeshire coastal paths medieval pilgrims would have taken, to a medieval day and Shakespeare in the abbey.

BBC: St Dogmaels Abbey

Andrew Krepinevich, a radical defence analyst whose thinking has been endorsed, in part, by Mr Rumsfeld, cites several weapon systems which deserve higher priority: long-range bombers, missiles and unmanned aircraft, ships designed for coastal warfare, and submarines which can fire cruise missiles.

ECONOMIST: Defence policy