Day Four in Jerusalem

On our fourth day in Jerusalem, the 11th day of the tour, we began our morning by visiting several sites on Mt. Zion (referred to nowadays as the Western Hill), a hilly area just outside the southwestern walls of the Old City which is home to several religiously historical sites. Among them is the Dormition Abbey, a Catholic abbey said to mark the spot where Mary, mother of Jesus, died. Another site is the Room of the Last Supper (or the Cenacle) , a building built by the Crusaders over the spot where Jesus is believed to have had his last meal with his apostles prior to his crucifixion. Also on Mt Zion is the Monastery of Saint Savior, an Armenian convent constructed over the site of Caiaphas' home, the Jewish High Priest who plotted the death of Jesus. The Tomb of King David is also located on Mt Zion, below the Room of the Last Supper, although many historians and Jewish scholars refute that this is the actual resting place of King David. Despite this, King David's Tomb became the holiest site in Israel until 1967 when Israel reclaimed the Western Wall following the Six Day War. We visited both the Room of the Last Supper and King David's Tomb during our visit to Mt Zion. From here we entered the Old City's Armenian Quarter via the Zion Gate and proceeded into the Jewish Quarter where we walked the Cardo, the famous colonnaded main street of Byzantine Jerusalem, a thriving market place today as it was back then. As we entered the Christian Quarter we climbed to the rooftop of one section to get a view of the Dome of the Rock, the famous shrine within the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex atop the Temple Mount, the third holiest site in Islam. We then visited the shop of a third generation fabric maker in the Muristan Market to learn about hand-woven silk, cotton and gold-threaded clothing used to make the robes and garments worn by Christian priests, Muslim imams and ultra-Orthodox Jews.  After lunch we toured the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over Calvary Hill, the spot where Jesus was crucified and the site of his tomb. That evening our group visited a Jewish family in the Kiryat HaYovel neighborhood of southwestern Jerusalem for Shabbat Dinner.