“A city on the top of a mountain cannot be hidden.” With these words Jesus called in the Sermon on the Mount to be “light of the world”. Accustomed to teach with easy-to-understand examples, surely Christ also pointed to a real place when he made this exhortation. Looking up, he could glimpse Hippos, a city that stood majestically on a hilltop on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, making it visible from any point on these waters that witnessed great miracles. Hippos, which in Greek means horse, is also known as Susita, which in Aramaic means mare. This Greco-Roman and Greek-speaking city was one of the cities of the Decapolis mentioned in the Gospels. It was destroyed in the great earthquake of 749, and there ended the greatness of a place of which we have archaeological remains of incalculable value. It is today an archaeological example of a defensive bastion, but at the same time a sample of the expansive force of a nascent Christianity. Read more here.