Acre Hospitaller Citadel

The Hospitaller Citadel at Acre was largely destroyed after the Mamluk siege of 1291 but now the vaults and tunnel to the docks are restored.The citadel was the headquarters of the Hospitaller Order in the city and after the capture of Acre most of the city was razed to prevent reoccupation by the Crusaders. It was rebuilt by the Ottomans, in use by the British in their occupation and then excavated to reveal the Hospitaller remains which have now been restored for tourist and educational visits.

My Experience

To give some context on Acre and the Crusades:
In 1096 the Pope preached a Crusade to free the Holy Places of the Middle East from the Muslims. Various western lords (but no royalty) took the idea up and in 1099 recaptured Jerusalem. Various other cities fell before and after and they set up a Latin kingdom (to distinguish them from the Greek or Byzantine church).

Initially all was good as the Muslims were disunited and the combination of penance for sins, land opportunities, loot and doing God’s work meant there were plenty of new recruits. After a time though the Crusaders fell to bickering and in-fighting, land and loot became rarer as conquests dried up and most importantly the Muslims were united under Salah al Din. He wiped the Christian armies out at Hattin (remember Kingdom of Heaven?), captured the king and then captured Jerusalem. Other cities fell until the crusaders were reduced to a few coastal towns.

The Third Crusade was then launched with the kings of both England and France participating. They recaptured Acre and defeated Salah al Din but didn’t take Jerusalem before they also argued like spoiled children and both went home. For the next 100 years the kingdom was based in Acre and it became a wealthy and powerful city. Crusader fortunes waxed and waned depending on the pettiness of the nobles and the unity of the Muslims but eventually the Mamelukes of Egypt made it their mission to remove the crusaders and conquered towns and castles one by one, destroying them and generally killing or enslaving the populace. Acre fell in 1291, a hundred years after Richard I captured it on the Third Crusade and the Crusades to the Middle East ended.

Two religious orders were set up around the time of the First Crusade – the Templars and the Hospitallers. If you haven’t heard of them then hang your head in shame and read some actual history. The Templars were a military order, fighting to protect pilgrim routes. The Hospitallers fought as well but also ran hospitals (hence the cunning name) to care for the sick. After the fall of Acre the military orders were at a loss to justify their existence so Philip of France used this as an excuse to seize the vast wealth of the Templars and claimed they were badger shaggers or some equally fanciful drivel to make up for his own short sighted greed. The Hospitallers carried on, setting up their main base on Rhodes til that fell to the Turks in 1522 and then Malta which defeated the Turks in the Great Siege of 1565 and were eventually dissolved by another Frenchman, Napoleon. In Britain the order was dissolved in the Reformation but then was reformed in the 19th century as St John’s Ambulance. So there’s a potted history of some of the most important events of medieval history that were probably never taught at school.

So, the Citadel of Acre was the head of the Hospitaller Order in the Kingdom of Jerusalem (fanciful title as the Muslims now owned it) from 1191 til 1291. It was a massive and well fortified building, holding their treasury as well as armoury, barracks etc but it didn’t do them any good and the city fell. The citadel was largely destroyed before the vaults and underground structures were filled with soil and an eighteenth century Ottoman palace was built on top. The vaults were then excavated in the twentieth century and are now available for visits. So we did. What a lot of waffle to get to that stage!

The vaults were incredibly impressive and very well laid out for visitors. As we arrived at 9 we were able to look at a lot of it with no one else around but by the time we left at 10.30 there were about 12 coach loads of tourists snaking through the rooms.

Full details of our 10 day Israel road trip are on my blog here.

Acre Hospitaller Citadel Photo Gallery

History

The Hospitallers were a military, monastic order devoted to caring for the sick in the Holy Land and to maintaining the personal safety of the pilgrims who flocked to the holy sites. They managed hospitals in Jerusalem and in Akko. Already by the first years of the Crusaders’ settlement in Akko, the Hospitallers were given property in the city. This was first documented in 1110, when King Baldwin I allowed them to own buildings north of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross which they received as donations. In 1135, some of the order’s buildings were damaged when the site of the Cathedral was expanded northward. This event led the Hospitallers to abandon the site they had occupied and to start to build a new center in the northwestern section of the city, adjacent to the northern wall of 12th century Akko. This is the Hospitaller Center as we know it today. This center was first documented in the days of Queen Melisende (1149), when a church named after St. John was built in the Hospitaller quarter south of the new center. In 1169, a pilgrim by the name of Theodoric visited Akko. Among his impressions of his journey to the Holy Land, he describes the Hospitaller center as a most impressive,fortified structure to which only the Templar Fortress can be compared.

Further to the downfall of the Crusader Kingdom in the Battle of Hattin (1187), Akko fell into Moslem hands and its Christian inhabitants fled. They returned to Akko four years later (1191) when it was conquered by Richard the Lionhearted, the King of England who headed the Third Crusade along with King of France Philippe Auguste. The Hospitallers returned to Akko, however the buildings that served them in the 12th century no longer met their needs at the time since Christian rule did not resume in Jerusalem in the wake of the Third Crusade. The Order lost its main stronghold and its headquarters, which were in Jerusalem. Renewed concessions granted to the Order by the new rulers of the Kingdom – Guy de Lusignan (1192) and Henry of Champagne (1193) – enabled the Hospitallers to expand their center in Akko up to the street adjacent to the city’s walls to the north. This led to renewed construction whose aim was to transfer the head of the Order and its headquarters to Akko. This construction process, which began in the late 12th century and continued throughout the 13th century, encompassed expanding the Hospitaller quarter and adding new wings and additional floors to the old center. Moreover, the Hospitallers constructed buildings in the new quarter – the Montmusard quarter – which expanded the city’s boundaries to the north and was surrounded by new walls of its own.   

The Kingdom of Jerusalem was founded in 1099 following the First Crusade and the conquest of the Holy Land . Jerusalem became the capital of the Kingdom and Akko subsequently developed into the port city and the main gate to the Holy Land. Following the battle of Hattin in 1187 and the defeat of the Crusader army, the Kingdom was conquered by Salah ad-Din, who headed the Muslim armies. He ruled in Jerusalem and Akko for about four years. In 1191, following a two-year siege, King Richard the Lionhearted – who headed the Christian armies – re-conquered Akko. During this journey, which became the Third Crusade, the Christians were unable to free Jerusalem and established their new kingdom along the shoreline between Tyre and Ashkelon. Akko, the second most important city in the Crusader Kingdom, became the capital of the second kingdom.

The Hospitaller Order, which thrived in Jerusalem during the First Crusader Kingdom (1099-1187) transferred its headquarters to Akko during the Second Crusader Kingdom (1191-1291). The Hospitallers, who had a quarter there during the First Kingdom, returned to Akko, expanded their headquarters and rebuilt the site, which consisted of two to three floors around a central court as well as underground sections – water reservoirs and a sewage system. The site is not yet entirely excavated ; to date, an area of about 5000 m2 was excavated, which encompasses the central court and the northern, eastern and southern wings. The western wing has yet to be excavated. Visitors of the site will primarily be exposed to the remains of the first floor of the Hospitaller headquarters since the upper floors were destroyed by the Muslim conqueror and the ravages of time. The Ministry of Defense’s Underground Prisoners Museum is currently located above the archeological site. Akko’s Hospitaller quarter houses three main buildings: the headquarters (Knights’ Halls); St. John’s Church south of the headquarters (now a municipal community center in the Ottoman Saraya House); and the hospital south of the church that is yet to be excavated

References

There is a great map with suggested walking route, including the citadel, on the Old Akko site here.

The history above is taken from the Old Akko site here.