City
Cesarea paneas
Banias
Listen to the story
Caesarea Paneas stood at the foot of Mount Hermon, where a stream bursts from a cave long held to be the main source of the Jordan, at today's village of Banias in the Golan. The cave was a famous grotto of Pan, and it gave the town its second name. Herod built a temple to Augustus beside it, and his son Philip enlarged the town and named it Caesarea after the emperor, which is why the Gospels call it Caesarea Philippi. A later renaming after Nero never took hold. Four votive niches still survive in the rock face.