Today we walked all over Old Jerusalem, inside the city walls. We walked from 8:00 am until 6:00 pm with an hour break for lunch. We went into the old city through a huge stone gate in the historic wall; there were security and metal detectors at the entrance. The streets in Old Jerusalem are all narrow alleys, with stone/brick paving. Some of the walls are 2,000+ years old; some have been newly repaired, but always in keeping with the old stone motif. The city streets have been converted to marketplaces, with hundreds of shops and vendors. There are many beautiful and unusual items for sale at the shops; I picked up a few things for loved ones and friends back home.
The first stop in Old Jerusalem was the Wailing Wall, where devotees can come and pray, often for hours on end, placing their written requests in cracks in the wall. The Wailing Wall is simply the above ground portion of the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, where Solomon’s temple is thought to have been constructed. The reason it is called the Wailing Wall is thought to be originally due to the fact that the wall was a close as believers could get to the temple, and they were crying at the loss of the temple; but it has come to signify the pain and suffering of the Jews who do not live in peace.
Above the Wailing Wall and through the gate is the temple mount area. This is theoretically where Solomon’s temple stood, until the Romans destroyed it in 70 AD at the fall of Jerusalem. The temple mount now holds on part of its land, the Dome of the Rock, where Muslims commemorate as the physical location where Abraham offered to sacrifice Isaac to the Lord, and where the Prophet Mohammad had a vision and was drawn up the heaven where Moses and God gave him the revelation to write the Quran. The Dome of the Rock was built in the 7th century, and was later taken over by the Crusaders in the 11th century, and was turned into a church dedicated to St. John, only to be taken over again in the 12th century by the Muslim leader Saladin—the greatest military hero of the Muslim faith. The Dome of the Rock is one of the most distinguishing features of Jerusalem; it is absolutely beautiful.
Next we walked the Via Dolorosa (the way of sorrows), the memorial path that Christ is thought by some to have taken carrying the cross to Calvary. The 14 Stations of the Cross mark the intricate path through the streets of Jerusalem, each station having a chapel or church built upon that site. All of the chapels are beautiful. The final Stations of the Cross end at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is built on the site where Christ is thought to be entombed. The church is absolutely beautiful. It is shared by six different Christian denominations. The center of the church holds a memorial tomb for Jesus, which was built by Emperor Constantine in the 4th century. All that is left of the original burial tomb is the area of the table, which has been replaced by a marble table due to visitors wanting to take souvenir pieces of the table.
Lastly we visited St Peter’s Basilica (Gallicantu), which is built over the remains of the house of Caiaphas, the high priest of the Sanhedrin, who sent Christ to Pontius Pilot for trial. The steps leading from Caiaphas’s house down into the Kidron valley and then the path up the Mount of Olives, is the likely the reverse of the path that Christ took after his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane to Caiaphas’s house for trial. It was a sobering thought. St Peter’s Basilica, constructed on that spot is one of the most beautiful churches in Jerusalem, the city of a thousand churches.
