Château Pèlerin

Château Pèlerin (Old French: Chastel Pelerin; Latin: Castrum Perigrinorum, lit. 'Pilgrim Castle'), also known as Atlit and Magdiel, is a Crusader fortress and fortified town located about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) north of the modern Israeli town of Atlit on the northern coast of Israel, about 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) south of Haifa. Château Pèlerin is located inside the Atlit naval base.

The Knights Templar began building the fortress in 1218 during the Fifth Crusade. One of the major Crusader fortresses, it could support up to 4,000 troops in siege conditions. It became for a short time the headquarters of the Crusaders; according to Claude Reignier Conder its architecture "must have made ‘Athlit perhaps the finest town of the period in the country". It has been described as the "crowning example of Crusader military architecture", although T. E. Lawrence found it lacking in elegance and imagination in terms of military architecture, settling on massiveness instead. In early August 1291, three months after the Siege of Acre, the forces of Al-Ashraf Khalil conquered Atlit, which was at that point the last remaining Crusader outpost in Syria, thus permanently ending Crusader presence in the region.

The fortress remained intact for several hundred years, until suffering damage in the Galilee earthquake of 1837. In the 14th century, it became home to a large concentration of Oirat Mongols. During early Ottoman rule, in the 16th century, it was recorded in tax registers as a port of call and a farm. Later, in the 19th century, it was a small fishing village under the influence of the local al-Madi family.

It was depopulated of its Palestinian inhabitants in 1948. In modern times, the castle is part of the Atlit naval base, a training zone for Israeli Naval commandos.

Text adapted from “Château Pèlerin” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Château Pèlerin ranks #1,367 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #9 of the 25 mapped in Israel. Founded 1218, it is older than 76% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 825 atlas entries founded in the 13th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 4,073 times in the last 60 days, more than 81% of the atlas. 2 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Haifa, 14 km away. It is one of the 109 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of the Levant. See how Israel compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗