Published: 12 July 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
IN THE FIERCE MORNING light of Caesarea, we hike down the beach, following the line of a ruined aqueduct that dates from the era of Herod the Great. The golden sand is littered with tiny russet tiles.
Peering up into the dunes, we shade our eyes as our guide points out their source—the crumbling floor of what’s believed to have been a diplomat’s home when this Mediterranean port was an administrative centre for the Roman occupation of Judea, some 2,000 years ago.
Farther on, we see evidence of the Muslim conquest of the city 600 years later, ushering in Arab rule that lasted until the Crusades. Later, in 1884, Bosnian fishermen settled this shore, and the minaret of their mosque now punctuates a lively tourist precinct beside the leafy and affluent Israeli town where the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, makes his home.
It’s our first morning in Israel, and already we’ve covered thousands of years of overlapping cultures, a perfect introduction to this tiny notch of land, so long inhabited, so often fought over and brimming with stories that have shaped the world.
FULL STORY Two tour guides - one Israeli, one Palestinian - offer a new way to see the Holy Land (Smithsonian)
Photo: The Mejdi Tours group at the 18th century Al-Jazzar Mosque, in Acre (David Degner / Smithsonian Magazine)
