The city is located in a well-watered and fertile valley on the Orontes River, about 20 kilometres from the Levantine Sea.
Today’s city stands partly on the site of the ancient Antiochia, which was founded in the fourth century BC by the Seleucid Empire.
Antioch later became one of the Roman Empire’s largest cities, and was made the capital of the provinces of Syria and Coele-Syria.
It was also an influential early center of Christianity, The Christian New Testament asserts that the name “Christian” first emerged in Antioch.
The city gained much ecclesiastical importance in the Byzantine Empire. Captured by Umar ibn al-Khattab in the seventh century, the medieval Antakiyah was conquered or re-conquered several times: by the Byzantines in 969, the Seljuks in 1084, the Crusaders in 1098, the Mamluks in 1268, and eventually the Ottomans in 1517, who would integrate it to the Aleppo Eyalet then to the Aleppo Vilayet. The city joined the Hatay State under the French Mandate before joining the Turkish Republic.
