The walls that enclose the Old City of Jerusalem today were rebuilt by the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1537-41, though they have been restored many times since. They closely follow the line of the walls as they were at the time of the First Crusade in 1099. Today visitors can gain excellent views of the city and its surroundings by walking the circuit of its walls, partly atop its ramparts and partly along the outer footing, a distance of four kilometres in all.
The ramparts can be walked from the Jaffa Gate in the west to Saint Stephen’s Gate in the east via the Damascus Gate and Herod’s Gate along the northern wall. Just to the east of Herod’s Gate is the spot where, during the successful First Crusade, at around noon on 15 July 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon fought his way onto the northern battlements and was quickly followed by Tancred and his men, who pushed into the city towards the Temple Mount. Eighty-eight years later, Saladin directed his attack against this same stretch of the northern wall when he laid siege to the city in 1187, leading to its surrender on 2 October. To walk the southern half of the circuit, from Saint Stephen’s Gate back to the Jaffa Gate, you must come down from the ramparts and follow the outside of the city wall. The route takes you round the massive retaining walls of the Temple Mount at the southeast corner of the Old City.
Since medieval times the Old City enclosed within these walls has been home to four distinct religious communities, which have gathered into neighbourhoods: the Muslim quarter in the northeast, the Christian quarter in the northwest (but excluding the Armenians, who have their own quarter in the southwest) and the Jewish quarter in the south-central part of the city.
World History
