Hall of the Crusader Knights

Interesting facts

The streets above stand seven to eight metres higher than in crusader times because 18th-century builders left the rubble in place and levelled it with sand.

Besides lodging knights and pilgrims, the northern part of the compound held a sugar refinery that was an important source of income for the order.

A public market street ran right through the compound for about 50 metres, bridged over so the knights could cross, and could be shut by a gate.

Fragments of a glazed bowl found on site bear olive-green crosses of the order, among the earliest known depictions of its cross in the straight 12th-century style.

The tombstone of the Grand Master Pierre de Vieille-Bride, who died on 17 September 1242, was found in the compound's oratory.

The west wing held two-storey public latrines with 30 cubicles on each floor, drained through wall channels to an underground chamber and sewer.

The north wing contains nine long, narrow halls: six storerooms, two cisterns collecting rain from the roof, and a passage to the courtyard.

From 1271 the compound was also the residence of the order's Grand Master, and later French sources called it the palace of the grand master.

After taking Acre in 1291, Sultan Khalil ordered the city's churches and fortifications razed so the crusaders could never use it as a base again.

The German pilgrim Theoderich described the Hospitaller compound after seeing it on his pilgrimage in 1172.

Why it is worth it

Some eight metres below the streets of old Acre lie the vaulted halls of the crusader headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller, the military religious order of St John. Massive square piers carry cross-ribbed Gothic vaults over spaces that once served as barracks, dining hall and hospital; the whole compound covers some 4,500 square metres and is organised in four wings around a central courtyard of about 1,200 square metres.

Crusaders first took Acre in 1104, and the Hospitallers began building here in the twelfth century. After the loss of Jerusalem in 1187 and the recapture of Acre by Richard the Lionheart and Philip II of France in 1191, the city became the effective capital of the crusader kingdom, and the order's compound grew into its principal fortress. Its largest space, the great hall, measures about 45 by 30 metres, its vaults borne by fifteen enormous piers. The refectory, with eight ribbed vaults about ten metres high, survives almost complete, and a narrow passage leads from it towards the crypt of the former church of St John. When the Mamluks took Acre in 1291 the crusader city was destroyed, and the halls were buried under rubble.

In the Ottoman period the rulers of Acre raised a new citadel on top of the buried ruins, and under the British Mandate it served as a prison. Only excavations in the late twentieth century, carried out mainly between 1991 and 1998, brought the knights' halls back into view. They are part of the Old City of Acre, a walled port on the bay north of Haifa that was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2001.

Getting there

The halls lie in the Old City of Acre, about 0.8 km from the town centre; Akko railway station is on the coastal line from Haifa. Haifa International Airport (HFA) is about 13 km away.

Hall of the Crusader Knights

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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