Touring the City of David

Touring the City of David

This adventure is a heady combination of mysterious tunnels and ancient remains. The climax is wading through the 2,700-year-old Hezekiah's Tunnel (water is knee- to thigh-deep; bring appropriate clothing, water shoes or sandals, and a flashlight; not recommended for very small children), though there is a dry exit from the site for nonwaders. Plan 1 1/2 hours for the walk, and an additional 45 minutes to wade the tunnel.

A platform at the City of David Visitors Center gives a fine view of the Kidron Valley, which drops sharply to the east, and gave ancient Jerusalem its best protection. Steps descend to the excavation site Area G, and from there halfway down the hill to Warren's Shaft (small sign on the right). At the entrance to the shaft are enlargements of remarkable clay seals. A tunnel slopes down to the top of a shaft that drops 40 feet to the Gihon Spring. Conventional wisdom identifies this as the point where King David's commandos penetrated the city in 1000 BC, but recent excavations near the spring have suggested an alternative route.

A short flight of steps and a tunnel takes you down through a cavernous structure with the massive foundations of 18th-century BC towers that once guarded the Gihon Spring, the original water supply of ancient Jerusalem. Hezekiah's Tunnel, also known as the Shiloah or Siloam Tunnel, was cut through the hill to secure the city's water supply in the face of the Assyrian invasion of 701 BC. It emerges at a small pool long identified as the New Testament "Pool of Siloam" where a blind man had his sight restored (John 9). Nonwaders have an alternative dry exit from the site.