Overview
The Old City of Jerusalem occupies the southeastern hill of the city on the edge of the Judaean Desert plateau, enclosed since the 16th century by stone walls built under the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Within this compact space lie the holiest sites of three world religions and one of the densest archaeological palimpsests on Earth: Canaanite and Iron Age settlement, the Herodian Temple Mount platform, Roman Aelia Capitolina, Byzantine churches, early Islamic monuments, Crusader rebuilding, and Mamluk/Ottoman restoration.
For Jews the Temple Mount (Har HaBayit) and the Western Wall (Kotel) — the last standing retaining wall of the Second Temple platform expanded by Herod the Great — anchor religious memory. For Christians the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, maintained by six denominations, marks the traditional sites of crucifixion and resurrection. For Muslims the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) with the Dome of the Rock (691 CE) and Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest place in Islam.
Archaeological work in and around the Old City — the City of David to the south, the Jewish Quarter, the Damascus Gate area — has recovered fortifications, water systems, and domestic quarters spanning three millennia. UNESCO inscribed the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls in 1981; the site remains among the most visited and most contested heritage places in the world.
