Arsuf

Arsuf is an archaeological ruin site perched on a sea cliff on the Israeli Mediterranean coast, roughly 15 kilometers north of Tel Aviv, now protected as Apollonia-Arsuf National Park. The settlement layers span the late Bronze Age through Phoenician, Hellenistic, Byzantine, and Arab periods before the Crusaders built a fortified town here in the 12th century, making it a key stronghold of the Crusader states. In 1265, Mamluk sultan Baybars besieged and then systematically demolished the fortress — the collapsed towers and filled cisterns visible today are the deliberate work of that destruction. Visitors can walk along preserved curtain walls, pass through pointed-arch gateways, and follow cliff-edge trails with open views over the Mediterranean.