The Crusader port that held — a UNESCO old city of knights' halls, Ottoman bazaars, and a walled sea horizon
Akko (historically Acre) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site port city in northern Israel spanning 5,000 years of history — best known for its extraordinary underground Crusader city, the largest and best-preserved Crusader complex in the world, which survives intact beneath the Ottoman-era city built on top of it. The old city's winding lanes contain Ottoman khans, a vaulted bazaar, a mosque built over a Crusader cathedral, and sea walls built by Jazzar Pasha that repelled Napoleon's 1799 siege.
Akko was conquered by Alexander the Great (332 BCE), the Crusaders (1104 CE, who made it the main port of the Kingdom of Jerusalem), Saladin (1187), Richard I of England (1191), and finally the Mamluks (1291), who ended the Crusader presence in the Holy Land. Jazzar Pasha rebuilt and fortified the city in the 18th century; his sea walls withstood Napoleon's 62-day siege in 1799 — Napoleon's first major military defeat on land. The underground Crusader city was unknown until excavations began in the 1990s.