You have to be fit for this day, we only use transportation at the start of the day, to the top of the Mount of Olives and continue by foot the rest of the day.
Mount of Olives
You will start the day on the top of the Mount of Olives with a panoramic view, which offers breathtaking views of the Old City and the surrounding area. Since antiquity, Jews have sought to be buried on the Mount of Olives, where according to the Bible the resurrection will begin. Eventually, the cemetery grew to cover much of the mountain and is still in use.
Your first stop will be at the Dominus Flevit (meaning “The Lord Wept”) teardrop chapel which was only built in 1955 over the site of a Byzantine construction and commemorates the occasion of Jesus looking at the city of Jerusalem and, when realizing that it was going to destroy itself by violence, weeping bitterly.
You will walk along the Palm Sunday Road, which winds its way down the mountain and is believed to be the path that Jesus took on his way to Jerusalem.
At the bottom you will reach the Church of All Nations and the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed and was arrested before his Crucifixion. According to the Bible, Jesus and his disciples came to Gethsemane on the night before his arrest, and Jesus prayed alone while his disciples slept. It is said that Jesus was deeply troubled and asked God if it was possible for the events that were about to take place to be averted. However, he ultimately accepted his fate and submitted to God’s will.
We will cross the Kidron Valley by foot, passing some impressive first century burial tombs and going up to the City of David, the ancient city of Jerusalem until we reach the highest point, Mount Zion.
Mount Zion is an important place for Christians, Jews as well as Muslims, a compound built by the Crusaders marks the spot of both King David’s tomb and the Room of the Last Supper, which you will visit.
Next you will enter the Old City through the Zion Gate and enter the The Temple Mount, the location of the Jewish Temples of the past and currently home to the Al Aqsa Mosque and the golden Dome of The Rock.
We exit the Temple Mount in the Muslim Quarter and will return, through the Souq, the Arab market, to the Jewish Quarter to visit The Western Wall, remnant of the retaining wall that enclosed the Second Temple which was destroyed in the year 70. To see the rest of the wall’s 583 meters, t is an option to go deep beneath the Old City in the Western Wall Tunnels (reservation needed), an incomparable foray into Jerusalem’s archeological past. Continuing in The Jewish Quarter we will pass the Cardo, part of Jerusalem’s colonnaded main street 1500 years ago and the Broad Wall, section of the 1st temple wall, built by King Hezekiah over 2700 years ago.
In the Christian quarter we will follow the last stations of the Via Dolorosa, the path that Jesus walked on the way to his crucifixion. These are located in the Holy Sepulcher Church, commemorating both the hill of crucifixion and the tomb of Christ’s burial.