At different periods of its history, its limits and extent probably varied greatly.

Its position was nearly opposite the island, and in the early times it must have been, like the other coast towns, strongly fortified; but after its capture by Alexander the walls do not seem to have been restored, and it became an open straggling town, extending along the shore from the river Leontes (Litany) to Ras-el-Ain, a distance of seven miles or more.
Pliny, who wrote when its boundary could still be traced, computed the circuit of Palae-Tyrus and the island Tyre together at nineteen Roman miles,[433] the circuit of the island by itself being less than three miles.

Its situation, in a plain of great fertility, at the foot of the south-western spurs of Lebanon, and near the gorge of the Litany, was one of great beauty.

Water was supplied to it in great abundance from the copious springs of Ras-el-Ain, which were received into a reservoir of an octagonal shape, sixty feet in diameter, and inclosed within walls eighteen feet in height,[434] whence they were conveyed northwards to the heart of the city by an aqueduct, whereof a part is still remaining.
The most important city of Phoenicia towards the north was Arvad, or Aradus.

Arvad was situated, like Tyre, on a small island off the Syrian coast, and lay in Lat.