Image Details

A first in Jerusalem. This artist’s reconstruction conveys how the Peristyle Building may have once looked (a peristyle is an open courtyard surrounded by columns).

Excavators found a row of six fragmentary columns, with two of the columns still in their original positions. Each had been coated with fluted stucco. A similar row of columns no doubt mirrored it across a courtyard. A narrow covered walkway ran on the outside of the columns. Though popular in the Roman villas at Pompeii and in the palaces built by King Herod at Masada, Jericho and Herodium, this courtyard style had been unknown in Jerusalem before the Jewish Quarter excavations.