Masada Israel

Legendary

A grand palace located on a plateau in the Judean Desert.

Photo by Gary Todd

Nearly 2,000 years later, you can still see exactly where the Roman army camped. Eight rectangular outlines sit in the desert around the base of the mountain, along with a wall that circled the whole thing.

Then there's the ramp. The Romans piled up earth and timber against the western cliff until they'd built a road to the top, and it's still there.

Masada is a flat-topped mountain in the Judaean Desert, rising about 434 meters above the Dead Sea. King Herod the Great built on top of it between 37 and 31 BC.

Herod ruled Judaea for the Romans, and he wasn't popular. He wanted somewhere to hide if his people ever turned on him.

So he built a fortress that was also a palace complex. The Northern Palace hung down the cliff face in three levels, with painted walls and columns looking out over the sea.

The Western Palace held throne rooms and a Roman-style bathhouse. Enormous storerooms could hold years of food, and cisterns cut into the rock caught rainwater.

Herod died in 4 BC and never needed it. Decades later, others did.

In 66 AD, Jewish rebels rose up against Rome. A group of them seized Masada, and after Jerusalem fell in 70 AD, about 960 men, women, and children were living in Herod's old palaces.

The Romans came for them in 72 AD. A legion of around 8,000 soldiers surrounded the mountain and spent months building the ramp.

In spring of 73 AD, they broke through the wall. According to the historian Josephus, the defenders chose to die rather than be captured, and only two women and five children survived.

Historians still argue about how much of that story is true. Either way, Masada became a symbol of resistance, and UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site in 2001.

Ride the cable car up, or hike the Snake Path at dawn to watch the sun rise over the Dead Sea. Walk through the Northern Palace and look for the original painted plaster on the walls. Stand at the western edge and look down at the Roman ramp and camps, the most complete siege works left anywhere in the world.