[5] Little remains of the castle, which was reputedly built in 1130s by a Castilian nobleman Rodrigo González de Lara[6] who later gave it to the Templars.

In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Latrun as a few adobe huts among the ruins of a medieval fortress.

[10] In December 1890, a monastery was established at Latrun by French, German and Flemish monks of the Trappist order, from Sept-Fons Abbey in France, at the request of Monseigneur Poyet of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

The monks bought the 'Maccabee Hotel', formerly called 'The Howard' from the Batato brothers together with two-hundred hectares of land and started the community in a building which still stands in the monastic domain.

[12] The monks established a vineyard using knowledge gained in France and advice from an expert in the employ of Baron Edmond James de Rothschild from the Carmel-Mizrahi Winery.

Latrun and its environs saw heavy fighting during the Sinai and Palestine campaign, an offensive launched in the fall of 1917 by the Entente powers against the Ottoman Empire and its allies.

[citation needed] A Juniorate, a school for young boys, ran from 1931 until 1963 and provided many vocations for the community, especially of Lebanese monks.

Moshe Sharett, later Israel's second Prime Minister, and several other members of the Jewish Agency's Executive Committee, were held at Latrun for several months in 1946.

[23] The road from the coastal plain to Jerusalem was blocked after the British withdrew and handed the fort of Latrun over to Jordan's Arab Legion.

[27] On 2 August, the Truce Commission drew the attention of the Security Council to the Arabs' refusal to allow water and food supplies to reach Jewish West Jerusalem.

[30] In the 1949 Armistice Agreements, the fort remained a salient under Jordanian control, which was in turn surrounded by a perimeter of no man's land.

In the Six-Day War of 1967, Latrun was captured by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and the main road to Jerusalem was reopened and made safe for travel.

The village of Latrun, our first objective, was built around the ruins of an old Crusader castle on the crest of a hill overlooking the Jerusalem road.

The Tegart fort became the Yad La-Shiryon memorial for the fallen soldiers of the Israeli Armored Corps and a museum was established there.