An ancient maritime city on the Phoenician coast, it was already known by the name of Akko in written sources in Pharaonic times (circa 1500 BC). The oldest part is on Tell el-Fukhar (“hill of the clay vases”) east of the present-day city. Following the conquest by Alexander the Great (313 BC), the city was founded again on the coast by the Hellenistic dynasty of the Ptolomeis of Egypt, who gave it the name of Ptolemais. It continued to be called this during the Roman and Byzantine periods. A Christian community existed there from the apostolic period, as we are told in the Biblical account of St. Paul’s travels: “ We continued the voyage and came from Tyre to Ptolemais, where we greeted the brothers and stayed a day with them” (Acts 21,7).
In Christian antiquity, it was a bishop’s seat and also enjoyed a certain prosperity. However, its fame comes above all from the importance that the city assumed as a sea port and seat of government during the second Crusader period after Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Arab army led by Saladin (1187 AD). Both the King and the Patriarch of Jerusalem made it their capital.
Many European cities had military and commercial outposts in Acre, in areas of the city reserved to them, namely the Franks, Pisans, Genoese or Venetians. Traces of these quarters still remain in the old part of the city. The city was defended by various military orders and in particular the Knights of St. John (Knights Hospitaller), the Templars, the Teutonic Knights and those of the order of St. Lazarus. The convents of the recently founded mendicant orders, such as the Carmelites, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, both male and female, stood out from the others.
