Caesarea Maritima

Caesarea Maritima was an ancient port city on the eastern Mediterranean coast, on the Sharon plain in present day Israel, built by Herod the Great between about 22 and 9 BC on the site of the earlier Phoenician settlement of Straton's Tower and dedicated to Caesar Augustus. It served for roughly 650 years as capital of Roman Judaea and its successor provinces Syria Palaestina and Palaestina Prima and as a major Mediterranean intellectual hub, housing an early Christian theological library of more than 30,000 manuscripts, with Herod's artificial Sebastos harbor built using innovative pozzolana concrete; captured by Crusaders in 1101 after the Muslim conquest of 640 had begun its decline, it was destroyed by the Mamluks in 1265 and had become a small Palestinian village by 1948 before archaeological excavation began in the 1950s.