Tuesday, March 13, 2012

David's Tower Museum &Zedekiah's caves - just another walk in the Old City:)

 I'm standing on a tower, inside David's Tower museum (an awesome museum about the history of Jerusalem), which is right inside the Jaffa Gate, the main entrance into the Old City. Looking down at the Jaffa Gate area, I see a large group of Orthodox priests parading through the streets, chanting as they go.
 Inside David's Tower Museum, which by the way, has nothing to do with David, it's just what they named it. It is an ancient citadel, built for defense, to protect the city's gate.
 Just a great shot of the Israeli flag through this ancient arch at the museum.
 It's ironic that after seeing those priests march through the city, we were walking down a street in the Christian Quarter (the Old City has 4 quarters: Christian, Jewish, Armenian, and Moslem), we see this on a doorway...I think it's a good idea!
 Right outside the Damascas gate is the entrance to 'Zedekiah's Caves' (which probably has nothing to do with Zedekiah:) It is a natural cave, but mostly a huge underground quarry that was likely used from the time of Herod the Great's building projects...he probably extracted large stones from here for the rebuilding of the 2nd temple!  You can see cuts of huge stones everywhere down here.
 I am standing right next to where a big stone was removed from.
 Here's a tour guide, doing a television spot (we just happened to watch then recording their television show), talking about how they would cut the stone, insert wet wood, which would expand and pop the cut stone away from the limestone rock.
The three girls I went there with - Chelsea, Liz and Eva...this is the largest room of the quarry, and one that the Freemasons held meetings in during the late 1800's.

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