The City of David (Hebrew: עיר דוד, Ir David; Arabic: مدينة داوود) is the oldest settled neighborhood of Jerusalem and a major archaeological site due to recognition as biblical Jerusalem. It is a narrow ridge running south from the Temple Mount. It was a walled city in the Bronze Age and, according to tradition, it is the place where King David built his palace and established his capital. The City of David was naturally defended by the Tyropoeon Valley on its west, the Hinnom valley to the south, and the Kidron Valley on the east; although over time the once-steep valley to the west has been largely filled in.
In the ancient pred-Israelite period, the City of David was separated from the Temple Mount by the Ophel, an uninhabited area which became the seat of government under Israelite rule. During the reign of Hezekiah, the walls of the city were expanded westward, enclosing a previously unwalled suburb in the area now known as the Old City of Jerusalem, west of the Temple Mount.
Although there is currently both Muslim and Jewish housing in the area, archeological digs are ongoing under many of the homes and it is proposed to make the entire ridge into an archaeological park.
Read more about City Of David: Archaeology, Modern Period
Famous quotes containing the words city of, city and/or david:
“Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man and material that exists in the continual creative play of urban living. The city as we imagine it, then, soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“Yet, when the city sleeps;
When all the cries are still:
The stars and heavenly deeps
Work out a perfect will.”
—Lionel Pigot Johnson (1867–1902)
“The old man had heard that there was a wreck and knew most of the particulars, but he said that he had not been up there since it happened. It was the wrecked weed that concerned him most ... and those bodies were to him but other weeds which the tide cast up, but which were of no use to him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)