A church from the Byzantine period, dedicated to St. Lazarus, was excavated in the 1970s. It was destroyed by fire, probably at the time of the Persian invasion in 614.
Nahariya was founded by German Jewish immigrants from the Fifth Aliyah in the 1930s. Construction of homes started in 1933, and the first two families permanently settled in Nahariya on February 10, 1935, which is now considered the official founding date of Nahariya.
Nahariya was intended to be an agricultural village, but the residents soon realized that agriculture was impractical and chose to focus on tourism, taking advantage of the natural surroundings and beaches. During the British Mandate of Palestine, many British officers coming from Khartoum stopped in Nahariya.
Nahariya became a development town in the 1950s after the nearby ma'abara was integrated. The town hence become a home to many Jewish refugees from North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. During the 1990s, the city absorbed a significant number of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Nahariya experienced a construction boom.
Due to its geographic location, 9.6 kilometres down the coast from Israel's border with Lebanon, Nahariya had been a frequent target of cross-border terrorist attacks by Palestinian militants, mortar attacks and Katyusha rocket fire during the 1970s. The most notable of those were the 1974 attack and the 1979 Nahariya attack.
During the 2006 Lebanon War in July–August 2006, Nahariya sustained a barrage of several hundreds of Katyusha rockets launched by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. As a result, the city suffered multiple civilian casualties and 5 fatalities. Significant damage was also inflicted on property and physical infrastructure. Nahariya's economy suffered a major blow, as two-thirds of the city's population had to evacuate, with the rest spending weeks in bomb shelters
