If you’re interested in a completely different perspective of the Old City of Jerusalem, here’s a perfect way to rise above the crowds and look down into the city from the walkways on the top of the walls.  Jerusalem has been a walled city since its beginning, for more than 2000 years.  It was walled at the time of Jesus.

The walls enclosing the city today represent many time periods and have been repaired throughout the centuries,  After the Mamluks conquered the Holy Land in the 16th century, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent restored the walls together with gates and towers as we see them today.

The Ramparts Walk is divided into two separate walks, the southern part of the city and the northern.  Both walks are under two miles and are included in one admission ticket.  The ticket is good for two days, so this afternoon we started with the southern walk up above this historic place.  (The north side walk is the longer of the two and covers a far greater area.)

A small booklet with information is given with the tickets, so you can read about interesting places as you walk these walls.  There aren’t many visitors who make it up here to the top, we saw very few others as we hiked up and down the stairs and towers and looked out over both sides of the city.

The city of Jerusalem has invested a lot of effort to make this experience safe.  There are guard rails and safe walkways the whole distance.  Even then, in some places my legs went a little weak because of the heights and narrow walkways!

You get to see more of every-day life from this vantage point, looking into the homes and courtyards of people living here.

The views are spectacular.

We saw the most beautiful views of the Dome of the Rock as the sun was setting.  It was magical!

Of course the stonework we see around us all the time is fascinating.  Oh, the history here!  Tomorrow we’ll walk the northern ramparts.