Gaza

Situated 76 kilometres southwest of Jerusalem on the southeastern Mediterranean coast, Gaza is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with archaeological evidence of settlement spanning some 5,000 years. The name appears in the military records of Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III in the 15th century BCE, and by the 12th century BCE the city had become part of the Philistine pentapolis — the five-city league that dominated the southern Levantine coast. Under the Byzantine Empire, Gaza flourished as a centre of religious scholarship and trade, and the foundation of the Monastery of Saint Hilarion around 340 CE by Saint Hilarion of Gaza established the first monastic community in the Holy Land. In July 2024 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed Tell Umm Amer, the monastery's site, on the World Heritage List using emergency procedures — simultaneously placing it on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

Gaza's layered history is embedded in its urban fabric. The Great Omari Mosque occupies a site that served successively as a Philistine temple, a Roman structure, a Byzantine cathedral, and a Crusader church before its conversion to a mosque in the Ayyubid period. A Philistine cemetery excavated in recent decades yielded burials dating to the Late Bronze Age (c. 1200-1100 BCE), providing rare direct evidence of the city's ancient inhabitants. The medieval city attracted scholars and merchants from across the Islamic world, and Sultan Baybars endowed the Great Mosque's library with more than 20,000 manuscripts in the 13th century.

Gaza is not currently accessible to tourists due to the ongoing armed conflict that began in October 2023. Travel to the Gaza Strip remains closed to independent visitors, and all major travel advisories counsel against any travel to the territory. The entries above are offered as a heritage record of a place of extraordinary historical depth, in the hope that its monuments and communities may one day be open to peaceful visitors once more.