The town was built by Herod the Great about 25–13 BCE as the port city Caesarea Maritima. It served as an administrative center of Judaea Province of the Roman Empire, and later the capital of the Byzantine Palaestina Prima province during the classic period. Following the Arab conquest in the 7th century, the city had an Arab majority until Crusader renovation, but was again abandoned after the Mamluk conquest.

Caesarea lay in ruins until the nineteenth century, when the village of Qisarya the Arabic name for Caesarea) was established in 1884 by Bushnaks (Bosnyaks) - Muslim immigrants from Bosnia, who built a small fishing village on the ruins of the Crusader fortress on the coast.

It was populated in 1884 by Muslim Bosnyak immigrants, who settled in a small fishing village.

In 1940, kibbutz Sdot Yam was established next to the Bosnyak village. After receiving word of the Deir Yassin massacre during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, the town was abandoned by the Bosnyak residents. In 1952 a Jewish town of Caesarea established near the ruins of the old city, which were made into the national park of Caesarea Maritima.