Excavations of the Roman city Aelia Capitolina, built on the ruins of Second Temple-period Jerusalem, have unearthed a few surprises.
By Nir Hasson
Haaretz
If you look at a map of the Old City of Jerusalem, you’ll notice something odd. While the vast majority of the Old City’s streets form a crowded casbah of winding alleyways, there are a few straight-as-a-ruler streets that bisect the city from north to south and east to west.
Roman City for the Noble Sanctuary- the Heritage of Common Ancestry
The best known of these straight roads are Beit Chabad and Hagai streets, exiting through the Damascus Gate; David Street, exiting the Jaffa Gate; and the Via Dolorosa.
Like the rest of the Old City’s streets, these straight roads are narrow but, unlike the others, they preserve a historical skeleton of sorts that forms the basis of the Old City we know today. This skeleton was created, most archaeologists agree, not during Jewish, Christian or Muslim rule, but during the Roman period, when the city of Aelia Capitolina was built on the ruins of Jerusalem following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD.
Ironically, it is actually the streets of this imperial and pagan city – which supposedly left behind no cultural or spiritual heritage for modern Jerusalem – that have bequeathed to the city the skeleton structure that has survived to this day.
Categories: Asia, Israel, Middle East, Muslim Heritage