Holyland Model of Jerusalem

Laid out on the open ground of the Israel Museum, this is Jerusalem as the historian Flavius Josephus described it: the city of the year 66 CE, four years before the Roman destruction of the Temple, reconstructed in stone at a scale of 1:50 over some 2,000 square metres. The historian and geographer Michael Avi-Yonah designed it from Josephus, other ancient texts and what archaeology then knew. It was built in 1962–1966 on the grounds of the Holyland Hotel, commissioned by the hotel's owner Hans Kroch in memory of his son Yaakov, who was killed in 1948.

The centrepiece is Herod's Temple on its vast platform, a reconstruction so widely reproduced that for many people it has become the picture of the Second Temple. Around it the model spreads over the city's real topography: the Temple Mount and the Antonia Fortress, the City of David and the Ophel on the eastern ridge, the Upper City with Herod's palace and its three great towers on the western hill, the pools of Bethesda and Siloam, theatres, markets and the northern new quarter. Seen from the walkway, the steep valleys that shaped every siege of the city are easier to grasp than on the ground today.

The model has never been frozen. As excavations advanced, details were corrected: Robinson's Arch, first shown as a bridge to the Upper City, was rebuilt as a monumental staircase leading up to the Royal Stoa, a hippodrome whose existence was not confirmed was removed, and in the Royal Stoa the roof was renewed with some 14,000 tiny clay tiles. In 2006 the whole city was sawn into pieces, trucked across Jerusalem and reassembled at the museum, next to the Shrine of the Book; the Antonia Fortress alone weighed about 13 tonnes. When the model was lifted from its old site, a large Canaanite cemetery was found beneath it.

Getting there

The model is part of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, about 1.4 km from the centre of the city as the crow flies. The nearest international airport is Ben Gurion (TLV), about 40 km away.