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This article lists the gates of the Old City (Jerusalem), Old City of Jerusalem. The gates are visible on most old maps of Jerusalem over the last 1,500 years.
During different periods, the city walls followed different outlines and had a varying number of gates. During the era of the crusader
This article lists the gates of the Old City (Jerusalem), Old City of Jerusalem. The gates are visible on most old maps of Jerusalem over the last 1,500 years.
During different periods, the city walls followed different outlines and had a varying number of gates. During the era of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem
The Kingdom of Jerusalem, also known as the Crusader Kingdom, was one of the Crusader states established in the Levant immediately after the First Crusade. It lasted for almost two hundred years, from the accession of Godfrey of Bouillon in 1 ...
(1099–1291), Jerusalem had four gates, one on each side.
The current walls of the Old City of Jerusalem were built between 1533 and 1540 on orders of Ottoman Sultan
Sultan (; ', ) is a position with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", derived from the verbal noun ', meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be use ...
Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman I (; , ; 6 November 14946 September 1566), commonly known as Suleiman the Magnificent in the Western world and as Suleiman the Lawgiver () in his own realm, was the List of sultans of the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman sultan between 1520 a ...
, who provided them with seven gates: six new gates were built, and the older and previously sealed Golden Gate was reopened (only to be re-sealed again after a few years). The seven gates at the time of Suleiman were, clockwise and by their current name: the Damascus Gate
The Damascus Gate is one of the main Gates of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is located in the wall on the city's northwest side and connects to a highway leading out to Nablus, which in the Hebrew Bible was called Shechem or Sichem, and from the ...
; Herod's Gate; Lions' Gate; Golden Gate
The Golden Gate is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. It is defined by the headlands of the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, and, since 1937, has been spanned by ...
; Dung Gate; Zion Gate; and Jaffa Gate.
With the re-sealing of the Golden Gate by Suleiman, the number of operational gates was only brought back to seven in 1887, with the addition of the New Gate.
Until 1887, each gate was closed before sunset and opened at sunrise.
List
The seven gates at the time of Solomon were:Damascus Gate
The Damascus Gate is one of the main Gates of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is located in the wall on the city's northwest side and connects to a highway leading out to Nablus, which in the Hebrew Bible was called Shechem or Sichem, and from the ...
; Golden Gate
The Golden Gate is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. It is defined by the headlands of the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, and, since 1937, has been spanned by ...
; Herod's Gate; Jaffa Gate; Lions' Gate; Silwan Gate (also known as Mughrabi Gate, and now as Dung Gate); and Zion Gate. After the re-sealing of the Golden Gate already in Solomon's time, the number of operational gates was only brought back to seven with the addition of the New Gate in 1887.
Previous gates
A smaller entrance, popularly known as the Tanners' Gate, has been opened for visitors after being discovered and unsealed during excavations in the 1990s. Sealed historic gates, other than the Golden Gate, comprise three that are at least partially preserved (the Single, Triple, and Double Gates in the southern wall), with several other gates discovered by archaeologists of which only traces remain (the so-called Gate of the Essenes onMount Zion
Mount Zion (, ''Har Ṣīyyōn''; , ''Jabal Sahyoun'') is a hill in Jerusalem, located just outside the walls of the Old City (Jerusalem), Old City to the south. The term Mount Zion has been used in the Hebrew Bible first for the City of David ( ...
, the gate of Herod's royal palace south of the citadel
A citadel is the most fortified area of a town or city. It may be a castle, fortress, or fortified center. The term is a diminutive of ''city'', meaning "little city", because it is a smaller part of the city of which it is the defensive core.
...
, and the vague remains of what 19th-century explorers identified as the Gate of the Funerals (Bab al-Jana'iz) or of al-Buraq (Bab al-Buraq) south of the Golden Gate).
See also
* Gates of the Temple Mount *Walls of Jerusalem
The Walls of Jerusalem (, ) surround the Old City of Jerusalem (approx. 1 km2). In 1535, when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire, Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ordered the ruined city walls to be rebuilt. T ...
References
{{Authority controlJerusalem
Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...