Montfort Castle 3.69

Montfort is a ruined crusader castle in the Upper Galilee region in northern Israel, about 22mi northeast of the city of Haifa and 10mi south of the border with Lebanon.The site is now a national park inside the Nahal Kziv nature reserve, and is an important tourist destination attracting many visitors from inside and outside Israel.EtymologyThe name of the fortress derives from the two French words mont (a mountain) and fort (strong), meaning the "strong mountain". It was built on land that the Teutonic Order purchased from the French De Milly family in the 1220s and is one of the finest examples of fortified building architecture in Outremer. The fortress was accordingly called Starkenberg, meaning the same phrase in German (stark meaning strong, and Berg meaning mountain).HistoryMontfort was the principal castle in the Holy Land of the military Teutonic Order, which was founded in the late 12th century in the port city of Acre. The fortress is built on a narrow and steep cliff above the southern bank of Nahal Kziv in the Upper Galilee region, about 8 mi (13 km) northeast of the city of Nahariya. Unlike many other crusader fortresses in the Holy Land, this fortress was not originally built for military purposes, but was built to move some of the order's administration, such as the archives and treasury, from Acre to a more isolated location. The Teutonic Order had at the time come under pressure from the Templars and the Hospitallers in Acre, who had designs of taking it over.