Image Details

Reconstruction drawing of northern entrance to Aelia Capitolina, consisting of three arched gateways flanked by two massive towers. Today, the Damascus Gate stands on this site. However, the smaller, left-hand (eastern) archway has survived intact and is fully visible in the bird’s-eye view of the Damascus Gate (see photograph).

The Arabic name for the entranceway, Bab el-Amud, or the Gate of the Column, preserves the memory of a column, bearing a larger-than-life statue of Hadrian, that stood in the center of a courtyard inside the gateway.