Exploring Jerusalem's underground city

The Holy City has an underworld.

While tourists and pilgrims spend most of their time above ground seeing the Dome of the Rock, the Via Dolorosa, and Jerusalem's many other attractions, a growing number of people are climbing down flights of ancient stairs to explore the cool vaults and winding tunnels built by generations of rulers and rebels.

The tunnels range from the underground cistern pictured here to ancient basements to a sewer thought to have been used by Jewish warriors fighting the Romans.

Once another tunnel is cleared and opened two months from now, there will be a mile of interconnected tunnels and rooms under Jerusalem. While that will make tours of underground Jerusalem more interesting, it will also make politics above ground more complicated.

Many Israelis point to the tunnels as proof that they were in the land first. This makes Palestinians see any new tunnel opening as another attempt to push them out of the city. An excavation of a tunnel running from the Temple Mount, now the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, into the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, caused political tension earlier this year. Locals say that the archaeologists are trying to make a connection with the Jewish temple and Silwan as a justification for moving the Palestinians out. The Israeli archaeologists say they're merely investigating history.

This is normal in Israel. There are in fact two Jerusalems, with two very different accounts of history. And that argument is now literally on two levels.


[Photo courtesy Berthold Werner]