KiwiOutThere

Jerusalem

Jerusalem – other stuff

So I’ve already written a few posts about Jerusalem… but there is a fair bit more that I want to mention that just doesn’t fit under the city’s history, gates, museum, Jewish, Muslim or Christian posts. So here goes some words about a few random things… Guns. I could not get over the amount of guns everywhere. And we’re not just talking small pistols in holsters attached discretely to the belt but full on semi-automatic weapons flopping over the shoulder as casually as a […]

Israel Museum

‘Israel Museum’ is a bit of a misnomer as there are several museums and art galleries in the one place as well as sculptures and models outside. We spent most of a day here during our stay in Jerusalem, starting at the model of Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period. This was a model of the ancient city at its peak just before the Great Revolt in 66 CE when it was destroyed. The model has a scale of 2cm = 1 metre and […]

Jerusalem: A walk through 4000+ years of history

Jerusalem is one of the most deeply contested cities on earth and hasn’t done a great job of living up to its name, meaning ‘City of Peace’. In its long history it has been attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times and destroyed twice (source). Although it is no longer physically divided – with the walls and barbed wire coming down in 1967, boundaries and divisions still exist among its people. How its future will play out with two very […]

Gates To The City

The Old City of Jerusalem is walled in. Here you’ll find an introduction to the various ‘gates’ whereby you can enter the city. Jaffa Gate seems to be the busiest of all the gates – perhaps because outside it is one of the main arterial routes into the city with bus stops just below the gate so it’s easy to get to on public transport. It is one of the closest gates to the downtown area of modern Jerusalem too. Pictured below is the […]

Muslim Jerusalem

Dominating the views of the Old City of Jerusalem is the gold ‘Dome of the Rock.’ It is positioned in the middle of a large area usually refered to as the Temple Mount but for Muslims its known as Haram esh-Sharif / the Noble Sanctuary. The Al Aqsa mosque is also situated on the Temple Mount and it is considered the third most holy place in the world for Muslims (after Mecca and Medina). For ca. 3000 years the Temple Mount has been the […]

Christian Jerusalem (1 of 2)

Jerusalem has so many Christian hot-spots: where Jesus had his last supper (Mt Zion), taught, rested and prayed (Mount of Olives), did miracles, agonised (Gethsemene) and where he was crucified (now Church of Holy Sepulchre). I’ll cover these and more… but first something I should have mentioned in my Holiday Season post… I witnessed and accidentally got stuck in the middle of the Jerusalem March, an event during Sukkot that has people of all nations march for a few hours through the streets singing […]