Caesarea


Source: Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, facing p. 126.

Caesarea
By the seashore, . . . a vast expanse of ground is covered with the almost indistinguishable débris of Herod's once-splendid city of Cćsarea Sebaste, so named in honour of Augustus; and within this area, in a central position close to the seashore (occupying, however, only about one-tenth of the space included within the walls of the Roman city), stand the ruins of the Crusading city which succeeded it. (Source: Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, p. 126.)

Caesarea Harbor


Source: Photographs of Charles Lee Feinberg.

CĆSAREA SEBASTE was built on the site of a place called Strato's Tower, and is minutely described by Josephus. It was planned and completed by King Herod the Great within the short space of ten or twelve years, and was inaugurated with great pomp and splendour in the twentyeighth year of his reign, B.C. 12. .  . . The greatest work was the harbour, which had a double station for ships, and which Josephus compares to the Pirćus at Athens. Its mole, the ruins of which still exist, extending a great distance into the sea on the southern side of the harbour . . . , was constructed of huge stones, and was originally, according to Josephus, "two hundred feet wide. (Source: Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, pp. 126-27.)

 


Source: Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, p. 111.

Part of the North Wall and Moat of Caesarea

The buttressed and moated [Crusader] walls were formed of well-hewn blocks of sandstone, and they are still in many places from twenty to thirty feet in height . . . .They enclose an extensive rectangular space, within which thorns and thistles grow among fallen columns and huge masses of masonry, where, in succession, palaces and forums, Roman temples, synagogues, Byzantine basilicas, mosques, and mediaeval churches have stood. (Source: Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, pp. 129-30.)

 

See Peter and Cornelius, Jaffa (Joppa), Ramleh, Acco, Beth Shean, Nazareth, or Sea of Galilee