Israel: Jerusalem – Exploring the Old City
One can spend days and days roaming around the Old City of Jerusalem and exploring its four quarters, visiting various churches and historic sites, watching people interaction, trying different foods, shopping, and enjoying the city. The Old City consists out of four quarters – Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Armenian – plus a separate area of the Temple Mount with its own gates and walls. The Old City is fully walled with massive defensive walls built during the Ottoman times in the mid-16th century by Suleiman the Magnificent. Exploring the city quarter by quarter is really like visiting four different countries in one day – completely different culturally, politically, and even cuisine-wise. The Muslim quarter is the largest and most populous and hectic with souqs and bazaars, while the Armenian Quarter is the smallest and quietest. The Jewish quarter is very religious with many synagogues and yeshivas, while the Christian quarter is a total pilgrim insanity to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. If you wanna see the most extreme expression of the four major world religions side by side in contentious co-existence – Old Jerusalem is the place to be!
