It was built on land that the Teutonic Order purchased from the French de Milly family in 1220 and is one of the finest examples of fortified building architecture in the kingdom of Jerusalem.

[4] Montfort was the principal castle in the Holy Land of the monastic military Teutonic Order, which was founded in the late 12th century in the port city of Acre.

The castle is built on a narrow and steep cliff above the southern bank of Nahal Kziv in the Upper Galilee region, about 8 mi (13 km) northeast of the city of Nahariya.

Jerusalem and most of the central Judea and Samaria mountains remained under Muslim control, and the Crusaders ruled mainly in the coastal plain and the Galilee.

Following a formal request of assistance by Grand Master Hermann von Salza to Pope Gregory IX, the latter sent numerous fiscal contributions by many pilgrims and European citizens, to aid in the renovation of the new property.

The Teutonic Knights expanded the fortifications and built an elongated two-storey hall-type structure in the centre; this is now the main remnant of the ruined castle.

[4] In 1271, after most of the Crusader strongholds had fallen into Baibars' hands, the Mamluk leader himself besieged the castle using several military engineering battalions.

[6] Adrian Boas blames the rapid fall of the castle on its weak geographical location and the unfinished outer works, while Nicholas Morton of Nottingham Trent University includes as factors Baibars' pillage of the Teutonic Order's estate and the weakened morale of the defenders after the fall in 1271 of three more military order castles.

One would have finally accessed the castle through a gate opening onto a vestibule situated at the eastern end of the domestic building, between this and the keep.

No trace of a continuation south of the castle has been discovered until the end of the 2016 excavation season; if anything, there might have been a connecting wall going up the slope to the westernmost part of the upper ward.

A building containing a water mill with its upper floor converted into a guest house during the 13th century is located in the Kziv River valley below the castle.

[10] The former royal castle, later residence of the de Milly family before the purchase of their property by the Teutonic Order in 1220 and known from Crusader sources as Mhalia or Castellum Novum Regis.

[11] Its ruins are located today in the Christian Arab village of Mi'ilya, where modern houses have been built against some of its outer walls.

[4] Archaeological excavations at Montfort occurred in 1926 in an expedition organised by Bashford Dean, curator of the Arms and Armour Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

A four-week season of excavations was conducted in the summer of 2011, organised by Professor Adrian Boas from the University of Haifa and supported by the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East.