Forty Centuries: Israel, Part 3: Haifa and Akko

During our stay at Zichron Ya'acov, we took a day to drive about an hour north to visit the ancient port of Akko. On our way, we drove up to have breakfast in Haifa which is perched on the slope of Mount Carmel. It was hard to try to capture Haifa itself on camera, but here's the view from Haifa of the bay. :)

And no photos of the wonderful place we ate at for breakfast but here's a photo of Suzy at the cafe....doesn't she look like she just drank an excellent cup of coffee?? :)

OK, on to Akko. Akko contains layers of history and is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. The Egyptian pharoah Thutmose III mentioned it as one of the cities he conquered in 15th c. BC. The book of Judges mentions how the tribe of Asher failed to drive out the Canaanites from Akko in 8th c. BC. Alexander the Great took it in 322 BC, followed by the Syrians, followed by the Romans, then in 635 AD, the Arabs. 400 years later, the Crusaders converted Akko into a major seaport for the Christian kingdom and when Jerusalem fell to Saladin in 1187, Akko became the capital of the Crusader kingdom. The Arabs recaptured it in 1291 and it became part of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th c. In 1799, Napoleon put Akko under siege for two months but failed to penetrate the fortress. Once the British defeated the Ottoman Empire in World War I, they used this same fortress to hold and even execute members of the Jewish underground movement. The Israelis quickly captured Akko in 1948 in their War of Independence but Akko still maintains its Arab character and I read in my guidebook that it has the highest percentage of Arabs in any Israeli city. Whew....there's the history, here are the photos. :)

The fortress wall:

The Citadel which had been transformed into a prison by the British. Today, it houses a museum and memorial to the Jewish underground resistance movement.