Masada

Herod the Great built seven amazing fortresses with slave labor, Masada being one of the seven.  He had a wall built out of stones 1300 ft high!  On top of this wall, he had his fortress covering 1800ft x 900ft. (This is approximately the size of five football fields!) 

Riding in a cable car to the top of Masada

You can sort of get an idea of how high up it is with this picture

This picture shows what the rooms would have looked like.  Paint mixed with plaster covered all of the inside walls

Here is a model of the layout of Masada

This is what the inside of the rooms looked like

This Map, along with the list below shows the detailed list of places at Masada

Herod's palace (this picture is taken from Wikipedia)

this was a bath house where slaves would stand on the other side of the wall and burn coals to heat up water that would come through the pipes, so that it would be similar to a sauna

  I found the information about how they obtained water to be quite interesting.  "The cisterns in the sides of Masada can hold 10 million gallons. Before we answer the question of the source, we may ask why Herod needed so much water?  If his enemies ever got the upper hand, all Herod would have to do was reach the place that had earlier given his family refuge. Here he could live out the rest of his natural life, no matter what happened outside. He left the southern part of the mountain free, says Josephus, for agriculture. The water wasn't only for drinking, then, but for irrigation: to ensure a permanent food supply. The storehouses on the northern end also testify to this motive of independence. Here we have an island of self-sufficiency, a bunker of last resort."

For anyone who appreciates this kind of history, there are more intricate details on this website concerning how and where all this water came from, because they were, after all, in the middle of the desert!

The indented lines on this model of Masada show where the path was dug into the surrounding mountains to bring water into this fortress. The water (and food) supply here was enough to last at least 100 years!

By the year 66 AD, the zealots were living at Masada and believed they were safe from Rome, but not for long.  It only took 60 days (from what I remember) from the time the Romans built their camp at the bottom of the mountain, to the time they captured the fortress.

If you look at the center of this picture, you can see the outline of the Roman camp set up while they built a road to take over Masada

This is a drawing of the ramp the Romans built out of dirt and sand.  They then built a tower with drawbridges so they could cross over and take Masada.  By the time they got there, however the Jews were all dead.  After fighting their best and realizing they couldn't win, the jews had designated two men (by casting lots) to kill one another, and then commit suicide (because suicide was unacceptable to them).  They did this because they knew it would be better to die than to be captured by the Romans.