6 Best Sights in Jerusalem, Israel

The magnificent golden Dome of the Rock dominates the vast 35-acre Temple Mount, the area known to Muslims as Haram esh-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). At its southern end, immediately in front of you as you enter the area from the Western Wall plaza (the only gate for non-Muslims), is the large, black-domed al-Aqsa Mosque, the third in holiness for Muslims everywhere.

Herod the Great built the Temple Mount in the late 1st century BC, and included on the center of the plaza was the Second Temple, the one Jesus knew.

Jewish tradition identifies the great rock at the summit of the hill—now under the gold dome—as the foundation stone of the world, and the place where Abraham bound and almost sacrificed his son Isaac (Genesis 22). With greater probability, this was where the biblical King David made a repentance offering to the Lord (II Samuel 22), and where his son Solomon built "God's House," the so-called First Temple. The Second Temple stood on the identical spot, but the memory of its precise location was lost after the Roman destruction and the banning of Jews from Jerusalem.

The Haram today is a Muslim preserve, and tradition has it that Muhammad rose to heaven from this spot in Jerusalem to meet God face-to-face, received the teachings of Islam, and returned to Mecca the same night, and the great rock was the very spot from which the Prophet ascended.

The Muslim shrines are closed to non-Muslims to leave the faithful alone to enjoy the wondrous interiors of stained-glass windows, granite columns, green-and-gold mosaics, arabesques, and superb medieval masonry. Even if you can't get inside, the vast plaza is both visually and historically arresting and worth a visit. Take a look at the bright exterior tiles of the Dome of the Rock and the remarkable jigsaws of fitted red, white, and black stone in the 14th- and 15th-century Mamluk buildings that line the western edge of the plaza.

Security check lines to enter the area are often long; it's best to come early. Note that the gate near the Western Wall is for entrance only. You can exit through any of the other eight gates on the site. The Muslim attendants are very strict about modest dress, and prohibit Bibles in the area.

For information about these sites, see the feature "Jerusalem: Keeping the Faith" in this chapter.

The large, round Roman Catholic church, with its distinctive cone-shaped roof, ornamented turrets, and landmark clock tower, is a Jerusalem landmark. It was built on land bought by the German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II when he visited Jerusalem in 1898. The German Benedictines dedicated the echoing main church, with its Byzantine-style apse and mosaic floors, in 1910. The lower-level crypt houses a cenotaph with a carved-stone figure of Mary in repose (dormitio), reflecting the tradition that she fell into eternal sleep. Among the adjacent little chapels is one donated by the Ivory Coast, with wooden figures and motifs inlaid with ivory. The premises include a bookstore and a coffee shop. A visit takes about 25 minutes.

Stand in the monastery's courtyard beneath the medieval bulge of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and you have a cross section of Christendom. The adjacent Egyptian Coptic monastery peeks through the entrance gate, and a Russian Orthodox gable, a Lutheran bell tower, and the crosses of Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches break the skyline.

The robed Ethiopian monks live in tiny cells in the rooftop monastery. One of the modern paintings in their small, dark chapel depicts the visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, as described in the Bible (I Kings 10). Ethiopian tradition holds that more passed between the two than the Bible is telling—she came to "prove" his wisdom "with hard questions"—and that their supposed union produced an heir to both royal houses. In Solomon's court, the prince was met with hostility by the king's legitimate offspring, says the legend, and the young man was sent home—with the precious Ark of the Covenant as a gift. To this day (say the Ethiopians), it remains in a sealed crypt in their homeland. The script in the paintings is Ge'ez, the ecclesiastical language of the Ethiopian church. Taking in the rooftop view and the chapel will occupy about 15 minutes. The exit, via a short stairway to another, lower-level chapel, deposits you in the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

The church built here in the 4th century AD by Constantine the Great became known as the Eleona (olive), and was associated back then with the ascension of Jesus to heaven. By the Middle Ages, tradition had firmly settled on a small grotto—the focal point of the site—as the place where Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father [Pater Noster]" (Matthew 6). The land was purchased by the Princesse de la Tour d'Auvergne of France in 1868, and the Carmelite convent stands on the site of the earlier Byzantine and Crusader structures. An ambitious basilica, begun in the 1920s, was designed to follow the lines of the 4th-century church, but was never completed: its aisles, open to the sky, are now lined with pine trees. The real attractions of the site, however, are the many large ceramic plaques adorning the cloister walls and the small church, with the Lord's Prayer in more than 100 different languages. (Look for the high wall, metal door, and French flag on a bend 200 yards before the Mount of Olives Observation Point.)

The transition is sudden and complete, from the raucous cobbled streets and persistent vendors to the pepper trees, flower beds, and birdsong of this serene Catholic monastery of the amiable White Fathers. The Romanesque Church of St. Anne was built by the Crusaders in 1140, and restored in the 19th century. Its austere and unadorned stone interior and extraordinarily reverberant acoustics make it one of the finest examples of medieval architecture in the country. According to local tradition, the Virgin Mary was born in the grotto over which the church is built, and the church is supposedly named after her mother (although "Anne" is never mentioned in the Gospels).

In the same compound are the excavated Pools of Bethesda, a large public reservoir in use during the 1st century BC and 1st century AD. The New Testament speaks of Jesus miraculously curing a lame man by "a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda" (John 5). The actual bathing pools were probably the small ones, east of the reservoir, but it was over the big pools that both the Byzantines and the Crusaders built churches, now ruined, to commemorate the miracle. A visit to both sites takes no more than 30 minutes. The good bathrooms here are a welcome addition.

Wait for one or two pilgrim groups who often test the acoustics in the church with some hymn-singing.

Tradition has enshrined this spare, 14th-century second-story room as the location of the New Testament "upper room," where Jesus and his disciples celebrated the ceremonial Passover meal that would become known in popular parlance as the Last Supper (Mark 14). At that time, archaeologists tell us, the site was inside the city walls. Formally known as the Cenacle or the Coenaculum (dining room), the room is also associated with a second New Testament tradition (Acts 2) as the place where the disciples gathered on Pentecost, seven weeks after Jesus's death, and were "filled with the Holy Spirit."

A little incongruously, the chamber has the trappings of a mosque as well: restored stained-glass Arabic inscriptions in the Gothic windows, an ornate mihrab (an alcove indicating the Muslim direction of prayer, toward Mecca), and two Arabic plaques in the wall. The Muslims were not concerned with the site's Christian traditions but with the supposed Tomb of King David—the "Prophet" David in their belief—on the level below. Allow 10 minutes to fully soak in the atmosphere.