A City Upon Two Hills
The Tour Starts Here
Ancient Jerusalem straddled two hills—the eastern hill, which includes both the Temple Mount (the traditional Mt. Moriah) on the north (far right in the plan above) and the City of David directly south of the Temple Mount; and the western hill, which includes the Armenian and Jewish Quarters of the Old City (in the lower half of the plan) as well as the area outside the southern Old City wall, today called Mt. Zion.
Though the remains in the Jewish Quarter lie within a quarter of a square mile of each other, a tour still requires good walking shoes because many of the sites are below street level and can be reached only by descending long flights of steps. Our vicarious tour, let by Nitza Rosovsky, will be easy on our feet but stimulating to the mind. The plan below contains our itinerary through the Quarter. Our first stop is the Broad Wall (1 on plan); from there we will go a bit to the north to see the Israelite and Hasmonean towers (2); next we will travel to the Burnt House (3) and to the Wohl Archaeological Museum, a complex of six houses known as the Herodian Quarter (4). The tour will conclude at the elegant Roman/Byzantine boulevard, the Cardo (5; see cover).
