Jerusalem: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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The walled Old City is nine tenths of a square kilometre — smaller than Tel Aviv’s port district — and inside it are the holiest site in Judaism, the third holiest in Islam and the place where Christianity locates the crucifixion, all within six hundred metres of each other. The walls you walk through were built by Suleiman the Magnificent between 1535 and 1542, on much older foundations. Practical rules matter here more than anywhere: cover shoulders and knees, the souq shuts Friday midday for prayers, Jewish sites shut for Shabbat, and Christian Quarter shops shut on Sunday. Three hours.

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A short history of Jerusalem

Jerusalem is already mentioned in Egyptian texts from the 19th century BC. Around 1000 BC King David captured it and made it his capital, and his son Solomon built the Temple there. In 586 BC the Babylonians destroyed the Temple, and in AD 70 the Romans destroyed the Second Temple. Over the following centuries the city passed between Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, who captured it in 1099, and Mamluks. Between 1537 and 1541 Sultan Suleiman built the walls that still surround the Old City. In 1860 Mishkenot Sha'ananim, the first Jewish neighbourhood outside the walls, was built. In 1967 the city was reunified.

The ten best sights in Jerusalem

1
Western Wall
Free, open 24 hours, head covered for men, and no photography on Shabbat
2
Western Wall Tunnels
35 shekels, booked ahead, and the tour runs 75 minutes underground
3
Temple Mount
Free, visitors 7:30 to 11 only, closed Friday and Saturday, and modest dress
4
Dome of the Rock
From outside only for non-Muslims, and it was finished in 691
5
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Free, from four in the morning, and six denominations share the building
6
Via Dolorosa
Free, fourteen stations, and the Franciscan procession is Friday at three
7
Tower of David Museum
40 shekels, reopened in 2023 after a long rebuild, and the ramparts are included
8
Church of the Redeemer
15 shekels for the tower, the best view inside the walls, and 177 steps
9
Hurva Synagogue
Free, destroyed twice and rebuilt in 2010, and closed to visitors on Shabbat
10
The Cardo
Free, the Byzantine high street, and it is 22 metres wide

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What is an audio walk?

Tours in Jerusalem →

A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Jerusalem:

Free walking tours in Jerusalem

One square kilometre, four quarters

Jaffa Gate · The breach in the wall beside the gate is not damage: it was cut in 1898 so that Kaiser Wilhelm the Second could ride into the city in a carriage rather than dismount at the gate, because the original L-shaped entrance was built to stop exactly that — a cavalry charge cannot turn a right angle at speed. Every old gate in the city has that bend.
Tower of David · The name is wrong and everyone knows it: the base of the tower is Herodian, from the first century BC, and the citadel above is Mamluk and Ottoman. David had nothing to do with it. The museum reopened in 2023 after a four-year rebuild, and the one thing to do here is climb the tower — it is the highest accessible point inside the walls.
The Cardo · Twenty-two metres wide, colonnaded, and it is the main street of Byzantine Jerusalem — and we know it was there before it was dug, because it appears on the Madaba Map, a sixth-century mosaic floor in a church in Jordan that shows Jerusalem from above with two colonnaded streets running through it. The excavation found the street exactly where the mosaic said.
Western Wall · This is not a wall of the Temple. It is a retaining wall of the artificial platform Herod built to extend the Temple Mount, and the huge smooth-faced stones with the recessed margins are his — the largest one, visible in the tunnels, weighs around five hundred and seventy tonnes and was moved without wheels or iron. The plaza in front is modern: until 1967 the open space here was about four metres deep.
Temple Mount · Fourteen hectares of flat platform on top of a hill that was never flat — the level ground is Herodian engineering, held up by vaults. The Dome of the Rock on it was finished in 691 under Abd al-Malik and its dome is twenty metres across; it is one of the oldest Islamic buildings standing anywhere. Non-Muslim visitors enter by one bridge, in the morning only, and may not bring religious items.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre · Six denominations share the building under an arrangement called the Status Quo, fixed in 1757 and confirmed in 1852, which froze every right of use exactly as it then stood — which is why a wooden ladder has leaned against a window on the façade since at least 1757, because moving it would require all six to agree. The front door is unlocked every morning by a member of one of two Muslim families who have held the keys since the twelfth century.

Under the city

Jerusalem is about four thousand years of building on the same ridge, and the archaeology is therefore vertical. This route goes down: a water tunnel cut through solid rock around 700 BC, a street Herod paved that lies eight metres below today’s ground level, a pool found by accident during sewer repairs in 2004, and a hall of Herodian stones under the Muslim Quarter. Three hours, and two of these stops are wet or need a torch. Everything here is closed on Saturday, and Hezekiah’s Tunnel has no way back once you are in it.

City of David · The original city was not inside the present walls at all: it was on this narrow spur to the south, because the only perennial spring in the area, the Gihon, comes out at its foot. Every ancient city is where its water is. The whole walled Old City you just walked is a later expansion northwards, and the oldest part of Jerusalem is outside it.
Hezekiah’s Tunnel · Five hundred and thirty-three metres cut through solid limestone, by hand, from both ends at once, around 700 BC — in order to bring the spring water inside the walls before an Assyrian siege. The two teams met in the middle, and an inscription carved at the meeting point describes the moment the diggers heard each other’s picks through the rock. The inscription is now in a museum in Istanbul.
Pool of Siloam · Found in 2004 by a municipal crew repairing a sewer pipe, who hit two ancient steps. The excavation that followed uncovered a monumental stepped pool from the Second Temple period, far larger than anyone had assumed, at the bottom end of the tunnel — which means pilgrims arriving in Jerusalem washed here before walking up to the Temple, on a street that has also now been found.
Davidson Center · At the foot of the southern wall is a paved Herodian street, and lying on it are the stones of the wall above, exactly where they fell in the year 70 — nobody cleared them, and the paving slabs underneath are cracked by the impact. One of the fallen stones carries an inscription naming the place where the trumpeter stood to announce the Sabbath.
Western Wall Tunnels · The exposed part of the Western Wall in the plaza is fifty-seven metres long; the wall itself runs four hundred and eighty-eight, and the rest is behind the buildings of the Muslim Quarter. The tour goes along it at the original ground level, past the largest stone in the wall — about five hundred and seventy tonnes — and through a Hasmonean-era water channel. Booked ahead, seventy-five minutes.
St Peter in Gallicantu · The church is built over caves that were used as cisterns and store rooms, and the Christian tradition places Peter’s denial here. The more concrete thing is on the slope outside: a stepped street from the Second Temple period, cut into the rock, which ran from the city down to the Kidron valley — and it is one of the very few surfaces in Jerusalem that people certainly walked on two thousand years ago.

Outside the walls, 1860 onwards

Until 1860 everybody in Jerusalem lived inside the walls, and the gates were locked at night. In that year Moses Montefiore built a row of houses outside, and the first families had to be paid to sleep in them because of the fear of bandits. Everything west of the Old City is younger than that: Ottoman neighbourhoods, a German Templer colony, a British mandate railway station, a market that became a nightlife district, and a nineteenth-century windmill that never worked properly. Two and a half hours, and this half of the city stops completely for Shabbat.

Mishkenot Sha’ananim · Moses Montefiore, a Sephardi banker from London, built these two rows of houses in 1860 as the first Jewish dwellings outside the walls. Nobody wanted them: the gates of the Old City were shut at night and the hills outside were genuinely dangerous, so a lottery was held and the winning families were paid a stipend to live there. Within forty years the whole city had moved out that way.
Montefiore Windmill · Built in 1857, by a firm from Kent, so that the new neighbourhood could grind its own flour and not depend on the Old City mills. It worked badly: the Jerusalem wind is unreliable and steam mills arrived within fifteen years. The British blew the top off it in 1948 to stop it being used as an observation post, and the operation was nicknamed Operation Don Quixote.
Mahane Yehuda Market · About two hundred and fifty stalls, and the thing that changed it was shutters: in 2015 an artist named Solomon Souza began painting portraits on the closed roller shutters at night, and ended up doing around two hundred and fifty of them — so the market has a second, completely different appearance after the stalls close. That is also when the bars open.
Nachlaot · Not one neighbourhood but about thirty, built between the 1870s and the 1920s by groups who each pooled money and bought a plot — which is why the lanes do not line up with each other and why there are more than three hundred small synagogues in a few square streets, each belonging to a community from a different country.
First Station · The Jerusalem terminus of the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway, opened in 1892 — the first railway in the Middle East. The line was built to a narrow gauge up a river valley, which made it slow and steep, and it carried passengers until 1998. The compound reopened as a food and events complex in 2013, and it is one of the few places in Jerusalem that is open on Shabbat.
Emek Refaim · This was the German Colony, founded in 1873 by Templers — a Protestant sect from Württemberg who came to the Holy Land to hasten the Second Coming and meanwhile farmed, built in Swabian stone and kept German street names. The houses have carved Biblical verses in German over the doors, and they are still there; the community was interned and deported by the British in the Second World War.

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Getting to Jerusalem and getting around

Yitzhak Navon station · 80 metres underground, 32 minutes to Tel Aviv, and nothing runs on Shabbat
Central Bus Station · Buses to everywhere, and the light rail stops at the door
City Hall light rail stop · The Red Line runs along Jaffa Street, and Jaffa Gate is six minutes’ walk

Cheap eats in Jerusalem

Jerusalem eats differently from Tel Aviv: the food is older, heavier and cheaper, and the best of it is cooked by families who have been doing one dish for seventy years. Two things exist here and almost nowhere else — the Iraqi-Kurdish slow-cooked stews of the market, left on low kerosene burners for hours, and the kugel of the haredi bakeries, a baked noodle pudding burnt almost black with caramel. A full plate is twenty-five to forty-five shekels. The hard rule: everything shuts Friday afternoon and reopens Saturday night, and the Old City places close around three.

Azura · About 45 shekels, closed Saturday, and go before two
Rachmo · About 35 shekels, cash is easier, and closed Saturday
Ishtabach · About 45 shekels, Kurdish stuffed bread, and open late on Thursday
Abu Shukri · About 30 shekels, cash only, and before three
Lina · About 30 shekels, in the Christian Quarter, and the msabaha is the order
Hummus Ben Sira · About 32 shekels, open very late on Thursday, and it is the hangover one
Pinati · About 30 shekels, standing at a counter, and closed Friday afternoon
Kadosh · A patisserie since 1967, about 20 shekels, and the croissants go by ten

Museums in Jerusalem

The museums here hold objects that are arguments: the Dead Sea Scrolls, a model of a building that no longer exists, a clock collection that was stolen and came back twenty-three years later. Opening days are awkward and worth checking twice — the Israel Museum closes Sunday, Yad Vashem closes Saturday, and the Knesset and Supreme Court admit visitors on two days a week only.

Shrine of the Book · Included in the Israel Museum ticket, and closed Sunday
Israel Museum · 54 shekels, closed Sunday, and four hours for all of it
Yad Vashem · Free, closed Saturday, and children under ten are not admitted to the main museum
Tower of David Museum · 40 shekels, reopened in 2023, and the ramparts are included in the ticket
Museum for Islamic Art · 40 shekels, closed Friday afternoon, and the clock hall is the reason
Rockefeller Museum · Free, built by the British in 1938, and the cases are unchanged since
Bible Lands Museum · 44 shekels, arranged strictly by period across the whole region
Museum on the Seam · 30 shekels, in a house that stood on the dividing line, and the bullet holes are left

Nature and day trips near Jerusalem

Jerusalem sits at about eight hundred metres on the watershed, and that single fact organises everything around it: walk west and you descend through pine hills to the coastal plain, walk east and you drop twelve hundred metres to the lowest place on earth within forty minutes. The desert begins about three kilometres from the Old City wall. In summer the city is dry and bearable; the Dead Sea at the same hour is fifteen degrees hotter.

Ein Gedi · 29 shekels, 50 minutes east, and go before ten in summer
Masada · From 31 shekels, the cable car is extra, and the sunrise path opens at four
Dead Sea · 40 minutes east, entry to a beach is about 60 shekels, and no shaving that day
Sataf · Free, 20 minutes west, and bring a torch for the tunnels
Gazelle Valley · Free, open from seven, and the gazelles are visible at dusk
Jerusalem Botanical Gardens · 40 shekels, six world regions laid out by climate, and open on Shabbat
Ein Hemed · 22 shekels, a Crusader farmhouse with a spring and lawns, and 15 minutes west
Qumran · 29 shekels, and cave four is visible in the cliff from the path

Things to do in Jerusalem with kids

Biblical Zoo · 69 shekels, open on Shabbat, and the train round it is included
Bloomfield Science Museum · 55 shekels, hands-on, closed Friday afternoon, and best for ages six and up
Train Track Park · Free, seven flat kilometres, and you can hire bikes at the First Station
Hezekiah’s Tunnel · Knee-deep water for 533 metres, a torch needed, and not for under-sixes
Sacher Park · Free, the city’s big lawn, and families barbecue on it on Thursday evening
Gazelle Valley · Free, a wild gazelle herd inside the city, and prams can do the whole loop
Tower of David · 40 shekels, real walls to climb, and the night show is projected onto them
First Station · Free, play areas and food stalls, and the one place open on Shabbat

Holy places in Jerusalem

Three religions hold sites here within a few hundred metres, and the practical consequence is a weekly rhythm with three different Sabbaths: the Muslim Quarter souq empties for Friday midday prayers, the Jewish city shuts from Friday afternoon to Saturday night, and the Christian Quarter closes on Sunday morning. Cover shoulders and knees everywhere, and expect bag checks at every entrance.

Western Wall · Free, open 24 hours, men cover their heads, and no photography on Shabbat
Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock · The compound admits non-Muslim visitors 7:30 to 11 only, and not on Friday or Saturday
Church of the Holy Sepulchre · Free, from four in the morning, and the queue for the tomb is two hours by noon
Via Dolorosa · Free, and the Friday procession starts at three
Mount of Olives · Free, and the lookout is best at eight in the morning
Garden of Gethsemane · Free, and the church beside it has a ceiling of stars
Mount Zion · Free, and the Cenacle, David’s traditional tomb and the abbey are one building group
Mea Shearim · Free, built in 1874, modest dress is required, and no photographs of people

Nightlife in Jerusalem

Jerusalem is not Tel Aviv and does not pretend to be: the night is small, concentrated in about four streets, and it ends earlier. The one unusual thing here is the market after dark — when the stalls of Mahane Yehuda close, their painted shutters come down and about twenty bars open behind them in the same lanes. Thursday is the big night; Friday night everything is shut; Saturday night the city restarts around nine.

Mahane Yehuda at night · Bars open when the stalls shut, about eight, and closed Friday night
Machneyuda · About 250 shekels a head, and book three weeks ahead
Nahalat Shiva · Stone lanes from 1869, restaurants and bars, and open on Saturday night
Zion Square · The crossroads of the centre, buskers till late, and the bars are off it
Ben Yehuda Street · Pedestrian, busiest on Saturday night, and it is the teenagers’ street
First Station · Live music most evenings, and the only place that works on Friday night
Hansen House · Concerts and screenings in a former leprosy hospital, and the garden is free
Tower of David night show · From 55 shekels, projected onto the citadel walls, and 45 minutes

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Frequently asked questions about Jerusalem

What is there to see in Jerusalem?

The top sights in Jerusalem are Western Wall, Western Wall Tunnels and Temple Mount. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Jerusalem?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Jerusalem without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Jerusalem?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Jerusalem, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: One square kilometre, four quarters.

How do you get to Jerusalem and get around?

The main ways are Yitzhak Navon station, Central Bus Station and City Hall light rail stop. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Jerusalem, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Jerusalem that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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