A palace built by Herod or the earliest Roman governors was spectacularly situated on a natural promontory jutting out into the sea south of the harbor and the Crusader city. The centerpiece of the promontory palace was a large pool that apparently was stocked with fish. Rows of columns surrounded the pool on all four sides, creating a peristyle porch with the open-air pool in the center. The pool was on the lower part of the promontory, with another part of the palace located on a higher terrace to the east.
The area between the Crusader city and the promontory palace was filled with spacious, richly decorated villas or mansions that belonged to the Roman and Byzantine governing elite. The villas were abandoned after the Muslim conquest and buried under sand dunes. Long before large-scale excavations began in this
8.6 Reconstruction of Herod's promontory palace. By Leen Ritmeyer ©
8.7 Inscription in the "archives building" at Caesarea.
Area in the 1990s, the discovery of an “archives building" immediately to the south of the Crusader city hinted that this was an elite quarter. The “archives building" consists of seven rooms surrounding around a central courtyard. Inscriptions in the mosaic floors identify this as the office where accountants of the imperial governor's tax department kept their records. The inscriptions remind citizens of their civic duty by citing passages from the New Testament, such as Paul's Letter to the Romans (13:3): “Do you wish to have no fear of the authority [the governor]? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval." Another villa nearby was paved with a beautiful mosaic floor depicting personifications of the four seasons. During the Byzantine period, new buildings were erected in this quarter, including a large public bath house, a palace, and a basilica (perhaps a church).
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