Located on one of the few safe anchorages along the southern Levantine coast, the ancient port city of Tel Akko served as a major cross-roads and meeting place between east and west throughout its three thousand year history. Five thousand years ago, the earliest inhabitants of Akko settled on a low kurkar hill that overlooked the fertile Akko plain, just north of the Bellus or Na‘aman River mouth as it flows into the Mediterranean Sea. Today the 22 hectare tell, locally known as Napoleon’s hill due to Napoleon’s camp having been placed on the mound in 1799, is a municipal park. From the top of the tell, visitors can view Akko’s picturesque historic harbor and the UNESCO World Heritage site of Crusader and Ottoman period Acre/Akko/Akka. Beginning in 2010, an international team of archaeologists and students from the United States, Israel, Europe and Asia are uncovering Tel Akko’s rich Canaanite and Phoenician history and discovering the world of total archaeology.