Caesarea Maritima: Herod's Harbour City on the Coast of Judea

Caesarea Maritima was a port city built by Herod the Great on the coast of Judea between about 22 and 10 BC. Named in honour of Augustus, it was equipped with a revolutionary artificial harbour, a theatre, a palace and an aqueduct, and from AD 6 it served as the capital of the Roman province of Judaea. The city’s ruins, between Tel Aviv and Haifa in modern Israel, are among the most important Roman remains in the Levant.

Founding the city

The site had been a small Phoenician and Hellenistic anchorage known as Straton’s Tower. Augustus gave it to Herod the Great around 30 BC, and Herod chose to rebuild it as a showcase of Roman-style urban life and a gateway for trade between Judea and the Mediterranean.

Josephus describes the construction in detail and says it took about ten to twelve years. The city was dedicated around 10/9 BC with lavish games. It had a grid of streets, a temple to Roma and Augustus on a raised platform facing the sea, a theatre, an entertainment arena along the shore, and Herod’s palace on a promontory with a pool cut into the rock.

The harbour of Sebastos

The coast here has no natural bay, so Herod’s engineers built one. Two great breakwaters enclosed an area of several hectares. They used Roman hydraulic concrete, made with volcanic ash (pozzolana) shipped from the Bay of Naples, poured into wooden forms sunk in the sea, where it hardened underwater.

Josephus compared the harbour to the Piraeus of Athens. It was one of the largest built harbours of its time, comparable in ambition to the later Portus near Rome. Within a few generations, however, the breakwaters began to subside, probably through a combination of settling sediments, storms and earth movements, and the harbour slowly decayed.

Theatre, hippodrome and water supply

The theatre, in the south of the city, is one of the earliest Roman-style theatres in the region. Its seats faced the sea, and it was rebuilt and altered several times in later centuries. Today it has been partly restored and is again used for concerts.

Along the shore north of the palace, Herod built a long, narrow arena for chariot races and athletic contests. Archaeologists often call it the Herodian hippodrome or amphitheatre, and Josephus mentions games held there. Later, in the second century, a larger hippodrome was built on the eastern side of the city.

A city of this size needed reliable water. A raised aqueduct carried water from springs on the slopes of Mount Carmel, about 10 kilometres to the north-east, crossing the coastal sands on arches. A second channel was added alongside it in the second century, and further channels in later periods, showing how much the city grew.

Capital of Roman Judaea

When Judea came under direct Roman rule in AD 6, Caesarea became the residence of the Roman governors. They usually visited Jerusalem only for major festivals.

In 1961 an Italian expedition led by Antonio Frova found a limestone block reused in the theatre. Its Latin inscription records that Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judaea, dedicated a building called the Tiberieum. This “Pilate Stone” is the only inscription from his lifetime that names him, and it settled the correct title of his office. The original is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, with a replica at the site.

Caesarea’s mixed population of Jews and Greek-speaking gentiles was often in conflict. Riots there in AD 66 helped spark the Jewish revolt against Rome that led to the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70. Vespasian later made the city a Roman colony.

Later history

Caesarea remained a thriving city in the Roman and Byzantine periods. According to the Acts of the Apostles, the apostle Paul was held prisoner there for two years before being sent to Rome. The Christian scholar Origen taught there in the third century and built up a famous library, and the historian Eusebius was its bishop in the early fourth century.

Arab forces captured the city around 640. Crusaders took it in 1101, and King Louis IX of France strengthened its walls in 1251–52, but the Mamluk sultan Baybars destroyed it in 1265. Underwater archaeology since the 1960s, especially the Caesarea Ancient Harbour Excavation Project from 1980, has mapped the submerged breakwaters.

Timeline

• c. 30 BC: Augustus grants the site of Straton’s Tower to Herod.
• c. 22 BC: Construction of Caesarea and its harbour begins.
• c. 10/9 BC: The city is dedicated with games.
• AD 6: Caesarea becomes the seat of Roman governors of Judaea.
• AD 26–36: Pontius Pilate governs from Caesarea.
• AD 66: Riots in Caesarea help trigger the Jewish revolt.
• c. 640: The city passes to Arab rule.
• 1961: The Pilate Stone is discovered in the theatre.

Why it matters

Caesarea Maritima shows Roman engineering at its boldest and Herod’s ambition to tie Judea to the Roman world. As the seat of Roman government it stood at the centre of events in first-century Judea, and its finds, above all the Pilate Stone, give rare direct evidence for figures known from written sources.