Acco

This week we went on one of our occasional day trips with our friends Elaine & Eddie, this time to Acco, the city north of Haifa known in English as Acre. The great attraction in Acco is the underground Crusader city, that was conquered by the Egyptian Mamluks in 1291 and destroyed and buried. It was discovered only in the 1950s when the Israelis began to excavate below the remaining Crusader fortress. They found a huge complex of Crusader buildings below ground, many of them intact, only filled in with dirt. Some of the halls and the columns holding them up are huge, and quite intact from the 12th century!
Although we had been there several times before, we went this time to see additional finds that had recently been made. This included more buildings, and in 1994 a huge tunnel was discovered by accident, dating from the 12th century, attributed to the Order of the Templars. They had been the Knights who had guarded the Temple compound in Jerusalem until the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem had been defeated by Saladin in 1187, whereupon they moved to Acco. It is an incredible tunnel that runs under half of the old city, used both for transport and escape. It is wider than a London underground train tunnel and looks just like one. When the Crusaders were defeated and forced out of Acco, they moved their headquarters to Rhodes, where their castle and many other buildings remain, all built in the same gothic style as in Acco.
Acco is a mixed Arab and Jewish city, and this time we found that it is much cleaner than it was, and there are many attempts to make it more tourist-friendly. We also visited the Bahai garden just north of Acco where the founder of the religion, the Bab, is buried, but unfortunately it was closed (these gardens are not as huge and resplendent as the Bahai gardens in Haifa). We had the same experience at the Tunisian synagogue that had been built as a replica of one in Djerba by a group of Tunisian immigrants. We consoled ourselves with a nice lunch at an excellent restaurant that was recommended by locals.
Several other interesting sites in Acco that we did not visit this time are the citadel, in which the British held Jewish prisoners during the Palestine Mandate and where they executed several Jewish fighters. At one point, the Jewish resistance staged a mass breakout from the supposedly impregnable prison through the adjoining Turkish Bath House (depicted in the film "Exodus"). We visited the Bath House and found that it has been made into a very touristic site. There are also some large guns from Napoleon's invasion, when he was defeated at Acre and forced to withdraw, and several Khans (Inns) from the Muslim period, one of which has now been refurbished as a luxury Hotel, and also the largest Mosque in Israel. Acco is certainly worth a visit.