Tartus (Arabic: طَرْطُوس / ALA-LC: Ṭarṭūs; known in the County of Tripoli as Tortosa and also transliterated from French Tartous) is a major port city on the Mediterranean coast of Syria.

The name derives from Ancient Greek: Αντιάραδος, romanized: Anti-Arados (Antarados or Anti-Aradus, meaning "The town facing Aradus).

Athanasius reports that, under Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, Cymatius, the Christian Orthodox bishop of Antaradus and also of Aradus (whose names indicate that they were neighbouring towns facing each other) was driven out by the Arians.

At the time of the Crusades, Antaradus, by then called Tartus or Tortosa, was a Latin Church diocese, whose bishop also held the titles of Aradus and Maraclea (perhaps Rachlea).

In the years before, Arab merchants would spread the word of Islam and locals embraced the new religion while others continued to practice their respective faiths.

During the Arab conquest of the Levant, caliphate armies conquered Tartus under the leadership of Ubadah ibn al-Samit in 636.

It was recaptured by Raymond of Saint-Gilles in February 1102 after two weeks of siege, then it was left in 1105 to his son Alfonso Jordan and was known as Tortosa.

They engaged in some major building projects, constructing a castle around 1165 with a large chapel and an elaborate keep, surrounded by thick double concentric walls.

[21] The Templars' mission was to protect the city and surrounding lands, some of which had been occupied by Christian settlers, from Muslim attack.

Tortosa was the last outpost of the Templars on the Syrian mainland, after which they retreated to a garrison on the nearby island of Arwad, which they held for another decade.

In 1832, at the beginning of the First Egyptian-Ottoman War, the city and its surroundings were conquered by Muhammad Ali Pasha, then ruler of Egypt.

[28] On December 15, 2024, Israeli Air Forces bombed the coastal city and its vicinity in an offensive which targeted military facilities following the fall of the Assad regime.

At 11:49 pm, a 3.1 earthquake which might have been caused by the explosions was reported with its epicenter about 28 kilometres (17 mi) off the coast of Banias, according to seismic sensors in the region.

[31][32] The city lies on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea bordered by the Syrian Coastal Mountain Range to the east.

Tartus occupies most of the coastal plain, surrounded to the east by mountains composed mainly of limestone and, in certain places around the town of Souda, basalt.

Tartus has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen (Csa) with mild, wet winters, hot and humid summers, and short transition periods in April and October.

[44] Among the composers whose name is associated with Tartous and Husayn al-Baher is the musician Safwan Bahlawan Ibn Arwad who has a distinguished performance in the pub and his artistic presence on the Arab art scene.

It was renovated under the French Mandate and since 1956, the building has housed the National Museum of Tartus, which exhibits antiquities recovered from Amrit and many other places in the region.

[48] In September 2021, the Directorate-General of Antiquities began a comprehensive renovation and fixing operations of architectural elements that were subjected to fragmentation at the National Museum of Tartus.

[59][60] The historic centre of Tartus consists of more recent buildings built on and inside the walls of the Crusader-era Templar fortress, whose moat still separates this old town from the modern city on its northern and eastern sides.

Their ancestors moved there in the late 19th century as refugees from Crete after the Kingdom of Greece acquired the island from the Ottoman Empire following the Greco-Turkish War of 1897.