Antioch was founded around 300 BCE by Seleucus I Nicator beside the Orontes River, near routes joining inland Syria with the Mediterranean. Named within the Seleucid royal family's dynastic tradition, it became one of the great cities of the Hellenistic world. Its port at Seleucia Pieria, fertile surroundings, and strategic location supported trade and government. Successive rulers expanded streets, public buildings, and defenses, while the nearby sanctuary and pleasure grounds of Daphne formed part of a broader urban landscape connecting political power, religion, and elite leisure.

Under Roman rule, Antioch became the capital of Syria and one of the empire's largest eastern cities. Colonnaded avenues, baths, theaters, an island palace district, and wealthy houses expressed its importance. Magnificent mosaics recovered from the region reveal domestic patronage, classical learning, religious imagery, and skilled workshops. The population included people of varied languages, origins, and beliefs. Commerce and imperial administration created opportunity while also exposing the city to military campaigns, taxation, social conflict, and rivalry between Roman and Persian powers along the eastern frontier.

Antioch held a central place in early Christianity. The Acts of the Apostles associates it with the first use of the name Christians, and the city became an important episcopal and theological center. Christian, Jewish, and traditional religious communities interacted within a complex urban society. Earthquakes repeatedly devastated buildings, notably in the sixth century, while Persian attack added further destruction. Byzantine rulers rebuilt parts of the city, but its scale and fortunes changed. Arab conquest in the seventh century began another phase without erasing the city's earlier religious significance or regional connections.

Byzantine recovery, Seljuk rule, and the First Crusade brought further struggles for control. Crusaders captured Antioch in 1098 and made it the center of a principality, which ended with Mamluk conquest in 1268. Ottoman rule followed in the sixteenth century. The modern city, Antakya, became part of Turkey in 1939 after the contested transfer of Hatay. Its mosques, churches, markets, houses, and food traditions reflected a long history of cultural interaction, even as wars, changing borders, and population movements reshaped the community.

The earthquakes of February 2023 caused catastrophic loss of life and destroyed much of Antakya's historic and modern fabric. Reconstruction therefore concerns homes, livelihoods, and community continuity as well as monuments and archaeological remains. Ancient Antioch survives in excavated mosaics, fragments of infrastructure, museum collections, and deposits beneath the living city. Its importance lies in a remarkably long sequence of metropolitan growth, religious influence, imperial competition, repeated disaster, and rebuilding. Any history of the site must connect its celebrated ancient past with the people whose present-day city has endured such profound loss.