‘Travel Blogs’ Brings Us the Old & New of Akko

Eran Davidov is a fellow blogger who we enjoy reading. He sent us a link to one of his posts on Akko, and well, we couldn’t have written it better ourselves. So here you go:

It’s amazing how “historical” changes meaning depending on where in the world you are. For example, the Sun campus in which I work is on the grounds of what used to be the loony bin (ok ok the care facility for would-be-napoleons) in Santa Clara. When Sun built the campus, they were forced by the local government and the historical society to keep the old hospital building and the old governor’s mansion intact. Any change to them, like adding wiring, repainting, fixing doors, had to be approved by a committee. The hospital is now the Sun auditorium and the governor’s mention is a set of executive meeting rooms. The buildings are less than a 100 years old.

Then you get the other historical. In my home town in Israel, on the way to the beach, there was this open space that had some semi-erect walls though the ceiling was long gone. There was a wire fence around it though I didn’t understand why until one day I found it in a guide book to Israel – it’s a 3000 years old Canaanite temple.

Akko (or Acre) is an old port town in the north of Israel. The port is not used for commerce anymore, except for tourist boats and some fisherman, but throughout history it was a major trade center. There’s historical evidence of habitation going back 3-4 thousand years. It was conquered and has changed hands quite a few times and was ruled by the Turkish, Druze, Mamluks, Romans and Greeks and was even the capital of the Crusader empire for a while. Surprisingly enough the only one who did not manage to breach its walls and capture it was Napoleon! After trying to charge it 6 times and failing, he gave up and left.

Click here to read the rest and see Eran’s great photos.

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