Jerusalem - From the Damascus Gate to Mount Scopus

At the Damascus gate, as at the Jaffa Gate, a flight of steps leads up to the wall-walk round the Old City walls of Jerusalem.

Opposite Solomon's Quarries in Jerusalem is a short alley leading to Jeremiah's Grotto, believed to be the prison in which around 605 B.C. the prophet Jeremiah wrote his Lamentations on the forthcoming fall of Jerusalem, which actually occurred in 587 B.C. (Jeremiah 38,6).

Beyond St Stephen's Monastery a street goes off on the left and runs into St George Street at the site of the Mandelbaum Gate, which from 1948 to 1967 was the only crossing-point between the Israeli and Jordanian sectors of Jerusalem. There was in fact no gate: merely a passage between barbed wire entanglements. It took its name from the owner of a nearby house, the site of which is marked by a plaque.

From the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem we go west along Shmuel Ben Adiya Street and turn left into Mount of Olives Street, which runs north to the older campus of the Hebrew University (opened 1925, with much recent building) on Mount Scopus (813m/2667ft). North of this are the Hadassah Clinics and the massive Augusta Victoria Hospital, which was financed by the German Emperor William II.

Museum on the Seam is a Socio-political Contemporary Art Museum in Jerusalem. The Museum is a one of a kind institution, unique in Israel - dealing with contemporary art conveying social commentary.

Under the bridge leading to the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem is an archeological site, the excavation of which was completed in 1982. There are remains of a Roman square or plaza, the Third Wall, built shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in A.D. 70, and part of the Roman gate.

Along Nablus Road in Jerusalem, is the French Dominican monastery of St Stephen, on the spot where it is believed that St Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was stoned to death.