Day in Jerusalem-Walking the Old City

Natalie Turner
Jerusalem (Introductory Walk of the Old City)
This morning we left for Jerusalem to walk through parts of the Old City, including the Christian, Jewish, Armenian, and Muslim Quarters. We first entered through Jaffa Gate (Sha’ar Yafo) from the west. We spent a short amount of time discussing the significance of a city gate. Many times throughout the Bible we see the gate being a place of meeting/judgment. Kings and leaders of the city would sit somewhere near the entrance of the gate to meet with the people in order to discuss their recent issues. Several examples from the Bible include Boaz, David, and Lot.
Just inside Jaffa gate, Herod built a large citadel to protect his city. Although the remains of the citadel from the time of Herod are mostly built over, you can still see the remains of the structure of Herod’s citadel. Herod had two citadels built to protect the city, one was the Antonia near the norther wall of the Old city and the other was David’s citadel just inside Jaffa Gate.
We walked through the Christian Quarter of the Old City which is narrow streets lined with mostly Arab shop keepers trying to sell you things. Walking down these streets is like walking through a movie set. There are so many people and so many things to buy! We made it to a shop keeper named Shabban who helped us exchange our money from American dollars to Israeli shekels.