This village was once the chief city and bulwark of Galilee. Its inhabitants often revolted against the Romans; but few remains of its ancient greatness now exist. There are, however, ruins of a stately Gothic edifice, which some travellers esteem one of the finest structures in the Holy Land. “We entered,” says Dr. Clarke, “beneath lofty massive arches of stone. The roof of the building was of the same materials. The arches are placed in the intersection of a Greek cross, and originally supported a dome or tower; their appearance is highly picturesque, and they exhibit the grandeur of a noble style of architecture. Broken columns of granite and marble lie scattered among the walls; and these prove how richly it was decorated.” In this place Dr. Clarke saw several very curious paintings.

This place was visited in the early part of the seventeenth century by a Franciscan friar of Lodi, in Italy, named Quaresimius, who says:—“This place now exhibits a scene of ruin and desolation, consisting only of peasants’ habitations, and sufficiently manifests, in its remains, the splendour of the ancient city. Considered as the native place of Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Virgin, it is renowned, and worthy of being visited.” “It is not easy,” says Dr. Clarke, “to account for the disregard shown to a monument of antiquity, highly interesting from its title to consideration in the history of ancient architecture, or to the city of which it was the pride, once renowned as the metropolis of Galilee.”

The following account is from the pen of the celebrated French traveller, M. La Martine:—“A great number of blocks of stone, hollowed out for tombs, traced our route to the summit of the mamelon, on which Saphora is situated. Arrived at the top, we beheld an insulated column of granite still standing, and marking the site of a temple. Beautiful sculptured capitals were lying on the ground at the foot of the column, and immense fragments of hewn stone, removed from some great Roman monument, were scattered everywhere round, serving the Arabs as boundaries to their property, and extending as far as a mile from Saphora, where we stopped to halt in the middle of the day.”

This is all that now remains of this once noble city.

“A fountain of excellent and inexhaustible water,” continues La Martine, “flows herefrom, for the use of the inhabitants of two or three valleys; it is surrounded by some orchards of fig and pomegranate trees, under the shade of which we seated ourselves; and waited more than an hour before we could water our caravan, so numerous were the herds of cows and camels which the Arabian shepherds brought from all parts of the valley. Innumerable files of cattle and black goats wound across the plain and the sides of the hill leading to Nazareth205.”