The setting does much of the work: a headland of pale sandstone dropping to the sea, with the excavated town of Arsuf spread across it and the Crusader castle at the seaward edge. Occupied since antiquity, the town was known to the Greeks and Romans as Apollonia and grew prosperous on trade and craft production along this stretch of coast. In the Crusader period it was fortified, with a dry moat quarried out of the bedrock, a gatehouse and towers commanding both the shore and the plain behind, where one of the best-known battles of the Third Crusade was fought. Today erosion is steadily undermining the cliff, giving the site a particular urgency. Filmed in 4K with extensive aerial coverage of the cliff line, the programme suits strands on the Crusades, coastal archaeology and heritage at risk.
