Where was Caesarea, the city of Cornelius?

Question

Accepted Answer

Caesarea Maritima, “Caesarea by the sea”, lies on the Mediterranean coast of Israel between Tel Aviv and Haifa, beside the modern town of Caesarea, about 87 km north-north-west of Jerusalem in a straight line; the map point stands on its ruins, now a national park. It is not Caesarea Philippi, the town at the foot of Mount Hermon where Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ, about 112 km to the north-east. Herod the Great built the city from 22 BC on the site of a small anchorage called Strato's Tower and named it after Augustus. On a coast with no natural harbour he made one, Sebastos, with breakwaters of concrete laid in the open sea, and raised above it a temple of Rome and Augustus, a theatre, a palace on a promontory and an aqueduct. From AD 6 Caesarea was the seat of the Roman governors of Judea; a stone found in its theatre in 1961 names Pontius Pilate. Where Pilate and Paul lived and were held is told in separate questions. In Acts the city is where the gospel first reached the gentiles. “There was a certain man in Cæsarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band”; an angel told him to send to Joppa for Peter, and while Peter spoke in his house the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard. Philip the evangelist “preached in all the cities, till he came to Cæsarea” and made his home there. Herod Agrippa I died in Caesarea in AD 44, and Paul was held there two years under Felix and Festus before he sailed for Rome. Strife between the city's Greeks and Jews helped spark the revolt of AD 66; later Origen taught and Eusebius was bishop there.