Jerusalem

Jerusalem began on a narrow ridge south of the Temple Mount, where King David captured a Jebusite fortress around 1000 BCE and made it his capital. The Gihon Spring, the only perennial water for miles, is the reason the city exists; Solomon was anointed beside it, Hezekiah carved a 533-meter tunnel through solid rock to bring its water inside the walls, and pilgrims climbed from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple on a stepped street that opened to visitors in 2026. Above it rises the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam, where tradition places the binding of Isaac.

Inside the walls, four quarters and three faiths share a single square kilometer: the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the end of the Via Dolorosa, the markets of the Muslim Quarter and the quiet Armenian Quarter. Across the Kidron Valley, the Mount of Olives holds Gethsemane, the Palm Sunday road and the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world, and Mount Zion keeps the Upper Room and the Tomb of King David. Beyond the walls is the modern capital: the Israel Museum and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Yad Vashem, the Knesset, Machane Yehuda and the neighborhoods built since 1860.