22nd Dec 2019 (extended tour) Caesarea Maritima, Acre UNESCO sites, Stella Maris Monastery Mount Carmel, Haifa

Caesarea Maritima

Caesarea Maritima , also known as Caesarea Palestinae, was an ancient city in the Sharon Plain on the coast of the Mediterranean, now in ruins and included in an Israeli national park. The city and harbour were built under Herod the Great during c. 22–10 or 9 BCE near the site of a former Phoenician naval station known as Stratonos pyrgos, probably named after the 4th century BCE king of Sidon, Strato I. It later became the provincial capital of Roman Judea, Roman Syria Palaestina and Byzantine Palaestina Prima provinces. The city was populated throughout the 1st to 6th centuries AD and became an important early centre of Christianity during the Byzantine period, but destroyed during the Muslim conquest of 640, after which it lost its importance. After being re-fortified by the Muslims in the 11th century, it was conquered by the Crusaders, who strengthened and made it into an important port, and was finally slighted by the Mamluks in 1265.

Acre UNESCO Sites

Acre, known to locals as Akko, is a city in the coastal plain region of the Northern District of Israel.

The city occupies an important location, sitting in a natural harbour at the extremity of Haifa Bay on the coast of the Mediterranean's Levantine Sea. Aside from coastal trading, it was also an important waypoint on the region's coastal road and the road cutting inland along the Jezreel Valley. The first settlement during the Early Bronze Age was abandoned after a few centuries but a large town was established during the Middle Bronze Age. Continuously inhabited since then, it is among the oldest continuously-inhabited settlements on Earth. It has, however, been subject to conquest and destruction several times and survived as little more than a large village for centuries at a time.

Stella Maris Monastry Haifa

Perched at the western edge of Mount Carmel, high above the Mediteranean and the coastal city of Haifa, is Stella Maris Monastery and church. The name of the 19th-century monastery — Latin for “Star of the Sea” — refers not to the magnificent view, but rather to an early title accorded Mary, the mother of Jesus. The monastery is the world headquarters of a Catholic religious order of friars and nuns, the Carmelites. The order had its origins at the end of the 12th century when St Berthold, a Frenchman who had gone to the Holy Land as a Crusader, had a vision of Christ denouncing the evil done by soldiers. Berthold gathered a small community of hermits around him, living in caves on Mount Carmel, in imitation of the Old Testament prophet Elijah. Later the community became known as the Hermit Brothers of St Mary of Mount Carmel. In 1206 the community received a written rule from St Albert of Jerusalem. In the same century, some members moved to Europe and established similar groups from Sicily to Oxford. Those who remained in the Holy Land were massacred by the Saracens in 1291. Carmelites returned to Mount Carmel in 1631 and finally completed the Stella Maris Monastery in the 18th century. Its stout walls and small openings reflect the need for defence against hostilities during its establishment.