The headquarters for the Roman legions stationed in Judaea and the official residence of the Roman governor since Pontius Pilate (CE 26-36). This port city was built over a twelve year period by Herod the Great (23-13 B.C.) that wanted to show his gratitude to his Roman patron - Caesar Augustus - through this monumental built. With the arrival of the Arabs (ca. 640), the harbor fell into disrepair and began to silt up. The coming of the Crusaders restored a Christian presence to Caesarea, but the harbor was not restored as they relied on the smaller ports at Akko and Joppa. For hundreds of years after the final destruction of the city, ships and boats were employed by residents of other coastal towns to remove many of the beautiful worked stones from the ruined structures. The aqueducts which had supplied the city with water for more than 1000 years were allowed to become obstructed and fall into disrepair. The springs, no longer able to flow through them turned the region north of Caesarea into a swamp; the area surrounding the city, bereft of its life giving water, became barren, gradually becoming covered by sand dunes. The site remained abandoned until the Ottoman Turks resettled Moslem refugees from Bosnia there in 1878. But, most of them lived soon after back to Europe.