Caesarea National Park occupies a stretch of Mediterranean coast where the remains of a port city meet the modern shoreline. The settlement began as Straton’s Tower, a Phoenician and later Hellenistic site, before Herod the Great received it in 30 BCE and transformed it into a monumental city. The UNESCO Tentative List dates the principal construction of the new city and harbor to roughly 22–10/9 BCE. Herod named it for his Roman patron, Augustus Caesar; the port was intended to make Caesarea a major eastern Mediterranean center.
The harbor, known in antiquity as Sebastos, was an ambitious piece of engineering. The shore offered no naturally sheltered deep-water port, so builders created artificial breakwaters and a protected basin. That infrastructure connected shipping, commerce, administration and the city’s ceremonial image. The remains visitors see today do not reproduce a working Roman harbor, but the coastline, submerged structures and archaeological displays help explain the scale of the undertaking. Sea conditions, erosion and later construction have changed the shoreline, so modern views should not be mistaken for a precise picture of the ancient waterfront.