Modi'in was the place of origin of the Maccabees, the Jewish rebels who freed Judea from the rule of the Seleucid Empire and established the Hasmonean dynasty, events commemorated by the holiday of Hanukkah.

[2][3] The name "Modi'in" (Hebrew: מודיעין) derives from the ancient Jewish village "Modi'im"[4] of the high priest Mattathias and his five sons, which was located in the same area as the modern city.

During classical antiquity, a town named Modi'in (Ancient Greek: Μωδεειμ, Mōdeeim)[5] existed in the general area of the modern city.

[5] An ancient Jewish fortified homestead dating from the Hellenistic period through to the Bar Kokhba revolt has been discovered in the area.

[6] Archaeologists discovered what one of them suggested might be an orderly numismatic collection of 16 silver tetradrachms and didrachms (shekels and half-shekels) minted in the city of Tyre during the reign of two Seleucid kings.

Possibilities are Suba near Jerusalem, Umm el-'Umdan near Route 20 to Canada Park and Latrun, al-Midya,[8] and Khirbet el-Burj (Titura[9][10][11]/Horbat Tittora).

Umm el-Umdan is an archaeological hilltop site near the southern Moriah (Buchman) neighbourhood of Maccabim Reut, towards Latrun Junction.

The six main settlement strata excavated date to the Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Early Muslim periods.

It contains the remains of a synagogue dated to the end of the 2nd-beginning of the 1st century BCE (Hasmonean period), in use till 132 CE (Bar Kokhba revolt).

[7] Through the effort of several individual citizens, worse destruction could be avoided at Titura and Umm el-Umdan, with authorities taking over the preservation of the surviving sites, while the public actively included the Hasmonean antiquities into their annual Hanukkah rituals.

The city of Modi'in was built in the 1990s, and it was later merged with the nearby towns of Maccabim and Re'ut, which had been founded in the 1980s, to create the unified municipality of Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut.

Modern Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut's municipal boundary encompasses a number of depopulated Palestinian villages: Ajanjul, Barfiliya, Bayt Shanna, Bir Ma'in, Al-Burj, Innaba, Khirbat al-Buwayra, Kharruba, and Al-Kunayyisa.

[20] In 2012, the European Union reclassified the small part of Modi'in originally founded as the community of Maccabim as a West Bank settlement since it had been established in the no man's land according to the 1949 Armistice agreements.

The effect of this redefinition was to deny the affected area (which is exclusively green-leaf residential) a range of preferential tax benefits that would normally be conceded on Israeli products exported to Europe.

The original city of Modi'in is laid out around a central hub, with the main arterial spokes organized as dual carriageways.

Each side of the artery is a one-way street, and in between is a wide green space, with linear parks, playgrounds, schools, and some small commercial centers.

These stubs also serve as the entranceways for the schools and mini-malls, preventing parking traffic from blocking the high-speed, left lanes of the arteries.

The traffic circle straddles a major northeast–southwest artery, HaHashmona'im Blvd., that connects to the southwest with route 431 (which has its eastern terminus in south Modi'in and extends west to Rishon LeZion), and to the northeast with route 443 (at Shilat Junction) providing connectivity to Jerusalem (southeast) and Lod (northwest).

השבטים HaShvatim – The Tribes (North Buchman/Buchman) and מוריה Moriah (South Buchman) are the most southern neighborhoods in the city.

אבני חן Avnei Chen – Precious Stones (Kaizer) is located towards the west of the city, and parts of it are still under construction.

The main road is named "Avnei Choshen" and leads to the only retail under residential mixed use buildings in Modi'in.