22 March 2006. The ruins were really impressive. The theater and horse stadium were incredibly preserved and were huge. From what the tour guide told us, Herod was a pretty sharp cookie. The city was designed for the Romans (gentiles) and he built attractions that would entice the Romans to bring their business there.
Herod’s palace was fairly extravagant: courtyards, gardens, a pool and views of the sea from three sides – not bad for a volunteer king of the Jews.
The Roman engineering was impressive. The aqueduct ran four miles from the spring to the city. The theater had two walls the height of the top row of seats that would block out the sound of the sea so that they could have much better acoustics.
The only bummer of the trip was that there wasn’t much to see that corresponded with Biblical stories. Peter’s vision that lead to the spread of the gospel to the gentiles or Paul’s trail prior to his Roman imprisonment would have been amazing things to have seen. But only Roman ruins seemed to have been unearthed.
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