Cyrene was an ancient Greek and Roman city near present-day Shahhat, Libya. It was the oldest and most important of the five Greek cities in the region. It gave eastern Libya the classical name Cyrenaica that it has retained to modern times. It was was founded in 630 BC as a settlement of Greeks from the Greek island of Thera (Santorini). Cyrene was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.