Into Israel– Part Eleven

There are many good reasons to go to see the man-made marvel that is the harbor at Caesarea Maritima. Along with the Temple in Jerusalem, the Herodium, and Masada, this was the fourth of Herod the Great’s unbelievable building projects and this one had to be the most challenging, carving a harbor out of the ocean where there wasn’t one before.

He forgot one thing— the need for fresh water, so the Roman engineers and the legions had to build a huge long aqueduct up the coast to a source of freshwater, like Mt. Carmel.

Here we are enjoying some shade from the extreme heat.

Here below is a schematic of the harbor design…

This place, which became the place where the Romans chose to rule the province from, including a hippodrome seen in the bottom of the picture, a Greek theater in the top of the picture, and Herod’s very own villa by the sea with its own swimming pool as you can see below…

Notice the remnants of columns in the water used to help hold up the piers and jetties at the harbor.

Here is a shot across the edge of Herod’s villa to the hippodrome….

Notice the ruts in the pavement made by the heavy carts, carting goods from ship to shore.

There is a modern theater facing the sea on the site where the ancient one was…. and performances still happen here regularly.

There are some interesting artifacts to be seen on the site… for instance

Sometimes it is difficult to imagine what the ancient buildings here and elsewhere looked like, but we do now have the help of technology and schematics they can create, for example…