The Kingdom of Heaven

Even though it's the better part of a week since my visit, and even though I'm already back in the States, I'm still processing my visit to Akko, so I think I'll just let the city speak for itself. The Hospitaller Citadel photos, the most explicitly medieval of the lot, are here on the front page, and the rest are visible after the jump, for those who are interested.

The Hospitallers' Citadel:

The port area and the ruins of the Pisan merchants' fortress:

(Note, in this one, the waiter standing off the edge of the fish restaurant with a net.)

The 18th-century al-Jazzar mosque:

And a khan from the same period that is being allowed to fall into disrepair. The columns on the bottom floor are spolia from Caesarea:

More scenes around old Akko:

(The door of this home proudly announces that the woman of the house has made hajj.)

There were so many soldiers' at the old British prison site that I wondered for a moment whether it wasn't still being used as an active military installation:

And finally, I'm not usually one for photos of views from hotel room windows and such, but I stayed in a family-run hotel that is in an Ottoman-period police station that was built right into the city walls, which was really pretty cool:

(The city walls and the sea as seen from the window of my room.)