1 · POSITION
The Old City of Acre is a walled port inscribed by UNESCO in 2001: a fortified Ottoman town of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with its citadel, mosques, khans and baths, standing over the almost intact remains of the Crusader capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1104 to 1291. The register holds it for its khans — the clearest surviving caravanserai fabric in the country. [1]
2 · KHAN AL-UMDAN
The largest and best-preserved caravanserai in Acre, Khan al-Umdan, was built in 1784 on the site of the Crusader kingdom’s royal customs house. Its forty granite columns, taken from Caesarea, Atlit and the Crusader ruins, give it its name, the inn of the columns. Merchants used the ground floor as a warehouse and the upper floor as a hostel — the khan’s division of goods below and guests above. [2]
3 · THE PORT AND THE KHAN
The khan stood by the port because the port fed it. In 1906 a clock tower was added at its entrance for the silver jubilee of Sultan Abdulhamid II. Today it is one of the city’s main sights and an open-air stage during festivals. [2]
4 · TWO CITIES IN ONE
Acre is bounded by its walls and the sea, and its Crusader halls lie both above and below the present street level. The register reads it as one of the few places where the inn of the medieval port and the inn of the Ottoman one can be seen on the same site. [1]
5 · ⚑ CANDOUR
⚑ The builder of Khan al-Umdan is placed in the rule of Ahmed Jezzar Pasha without being named outright by the source. Acre’s other khans are not described from sources here. [1–2]
Sources & Further Reading
Sources checked 22 October 2026.