Silwan

Al-Bustan (Arabic: البستان) is a well-watered area and neighbourhood located to the south of Wadi Hilweh in the Silwan area of East Jerusalem, and currently consists of more than 100 Palestinian homes. The area is the subject of a controversial proposed Israeli development project that envisions demolishing the existing houses and creating a national park, while constructing new four-story apartment buildings around it into which the current residents would be relocated. The area was ruled by Jordan from 1948 until 1967, when it was occupied by Israel, which then annexed it in 1980 in a move widely condemned internationally.

The Old Yemenite Synagogue, known to its congregation as Beit Knesset Ohel Shlomo (lit. "Solomon's Tent Synagogue"), is a restored synagogue from the nineteenth century Yemenite Village (Harat al-Yaman in Arabic), the Kfar Hashiloach (Hebrew: כפר השילוח) neighborhood in the Jerusalem district of Silwan.

The term Pool of Siloam (Arabic: بركه سلوان, Hebrew: בריכת השילוח, Breikhat HaShiloah) (Greek: Σιλωάμ) refers to a number of rock-cut pools on the southern slope of the Wadi Hilweh, considered by some archaeologists to be the original site of Jerusalem, located outside the walls of the Old City to the southeast. The pools were fed by the waters of the Gihon Spring, carried there by the Siloam Tunnel.The Lower Pool or "Old Pool" was historically known as Birket el Hamra, literally "the red pool".

The newer Siloam Tunnel (Hebrew: נִקְבַּת הַשִּׁלֹחַ, Nikbat HaShiloaḥ), also known as Hezekiah's Tunnel (Hebrew: תעלת חזקיהו, Te'alát Ḥizkiyáhu), is a water tunnel that was carved within the City of David in ancient times, now located in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan in eastern Jerusalem. Its popular name is due to the most common hypothesis that it dates from the reign of Hezekiah of Judah (late 8th and early 7th century BC) and corresponds to the "conduit" mentioned in 2 Kings 20:20 in the Hebrew Bible. According to the Bible, King Hezekiah prepared Jerusalem for an impending siege by the Assyrians, by "blocking the source of the waters of the upper Gihon, and leading them straight down on the west to the City of David" (2 Chronicles 32:30). By diverting the waters of the Gihon, he prevented the enemy forces under Sennacherib from having access to water. Support for the dating to Hezekiah's period is derived from the Biblical text that describes construction of a tunnel and to radiocarbon dates of organic matter contained in the original plastering. However, the dates were challenged in 2011 by new excavations that suggested an earlier origin in the late 9th or early 8th century BC.The tunnel leads from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam. If indeed built under Hezekiah, it dates to a time when Jerusalem was preparing for an impending siege by the Assyrians, led by Sennacherib. Since the Gihon Spring was already protected by a massive tower and was included in the city's defensive wall system, Jerusalem seems to have been supplied with enough water in case of siege even without this tunnel. According to Aharon Horovitz, director of the Megalim Institute, the tunnel can be interpreted as an additional aqueduct designed for keeping the entire outflow of the spring inside the walled area, which included the downstream Pool of Siloam, with the specific purpose of withholding water from any besieging forces. Both the spring itself, and the pool at the end of the tunnel, would have been used by the inhabitants as water sources. Troops positioned outside the walls wouldn't have reached any of it, because even the overflow water released from the Pool of Siloam would have fully disappeared into a karstic system located right outside the southern tip of the city walls. In contrast to that, the previous water system did release all the water not used by the city population into the Kidron Valley to the east, where besieging troops could have taken advantage of it. The curving tunnel is 583 yards (533 m; about 1⁄3 mile) long and by using the 12 inch (30 cm) altitude difference between its two ends, which corresponds to a 0.06 percent gradient, the engineers managed to convey the water from the spring to the pool. According to the Siloam inscription, the tunnel was excavated by two teams, one starting at each end of the tunnel and then meeting in the middle. The inscription is partly unreadable at present, and may originally have conveyed more information than this. It is clear from the tunnel itself that several directional errors were made during its construction. Recent scholarship has discredited the idea that the tunnel may have been formed by substantially widening a pre-existing natural karst. How the Israelite engineers dealt with the difficult feat of making two teams digging from opposite ends meet far underground is still not fully understood, but some suggest that the two teams were directed from above by sound signals generated by hammering on the solid rock through which the tunnelers were digging.

Ein Rogel (Hebrew: עין רגל‎ ʿĒn Rōgēl), also known as Well of Job, is a spring on the outskirts of Jerusalem.Ein Rogel was mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the hiding-place of David's spies, Jonathan and Ahimaaz, during Absalom's uprising against the rule of King David (2 Samuel 17:17). It may also have been a sacred place in pre-Israelite times.

Gihon Spring (Hebrew: מעיין הגיחון) or Fountain of the Virgin, also known as Saint Mary's Pool, is a spring in the Kidron Valley. It was the main source of water for the Pool of Siloam in Jebus and the later City of David, the original site of Jerusalem. One of the world's major intermittent springs – and a reliable water source that made human settlement possible in ancient Jerusalem – the spring was not only used for drinking water, but also initially for irrigation of gardens in the adjacent Kidron Valley, which provided a food source for the ancient settlement. The spring rises in a cave 20 feet by 7, and is located 586 yards (535 m) northwards of the Pool of Siloam. Being intermittent, it required the excavation of the Pool of Siloam, which stored the large amount of water needed for the town when the spring was not flowing. Before the sinking of the water table due to overpumping in modern times, the spring used to flow three to five times daily in winter, twice daily in summer, and only once daily in autumn. This peculiarity is accounted for by the supposition that the outlet from the reservoir is by a passage in the form of a siphon. It has the largest output of water in the area - 600,000 cubic meters of water a year (compared to 125,000 cubic meters for the Lifta spring in West Jerusalem.The spring is under the control of the Israeli settler organization Ir David Foundation ("El'ad"); it is sometimes used by Jewish men as a sort of ritual bath (mikvah).

The Givati Parking Lot dig is an archaeological excavation located in Silwan. It is adjacent to the City of David archaeological site. The dig was conducted by Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets of the Israel Antiquities Authority and underwritten by the City of David Foundation.

Warren's Shaft is a vertical shaft next to the Gihon Spring, the main source of water of Bronze and Iron Age Jerusalem, discovered in 1867 by British engineer and archaeologist, Sir Charles Warren (1840–1927). The term is currently used in either a narrower, or a wider sense: In the narrower, initial sense, Warren's Shaft is the almost vertical natural shaft leading down to a pool fed by the Gihon Spring. In the wider sense, as the Warren's Shaft system, it is the Bronze Age water system allowing protected access from the city to the Gihon Spring.After the 19th-century discovery of the vertical natural shaft, it was thought to have been the centrepiece of the city's early water supply system, since it would have enabled the city's occupants to safely reach fresh water in times of siege. This view is still held by many archaeologists, though some believe the shaft was never used in the water system, and that it was discovered by chance only during the Iron Age. In 2005, archaeologists discovered a massively fortified passage connected to a tower above the Gihon Spring. These fortifications appear to have provided secure surface access to the spring from inside the Middle Bronze Age city wall. How these fortifications relate to Warren's Shaft and Tunnel remains a matter for discussion.

The Silwan necropolis is the remains of a rock-cut cemetery assumed to have been used by the highest-ranking officials residing in Jerusalem. Its tombs were cut between the 9th and 7th centuries BCE. It is situated on the rocky eastern slope of the Kidron Valley, facing the oldest part of Jerusalem. Part of the Palestinian village of Silwan was later built atop the necropolis.

Wadi Hilweh is a neighborhood in the Palestinian Arab village of Silwan, intertwined with an Israeli settlement. The Silwan area of East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War and 1980 Jerusalem Law, an action not recognized internationally. The international community regards Israeli settlements as illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this. The Wadi Hilweh neighborhood stretches over historical Jerusalem's so-called Southeast Hill, extending down from the southern city walls of the Old City. According to tradition, Silwan originated at the time of Saladin in the twelfth century on Ras al-Amud, on the southwest slope of the Mount of Olives, then in the early twentieth century it expanded across the Kidron Valley (known to locals as Wadi Sitti Maryam or the Valley of St. Mary), eventually incorporating all of the Southeast Hill.

The City of David (Hebrew: עיר דוד, romanized: Īr Davīd), known locally mostly as Wadi Hilweh (Arabic: وادي حلوة), is the name given to an archaeological site considered by most scholars to be the original settlement core of Jerusalem during the Bronze and Iron Ages. It is situated on southern part of the eastern ridge of ancient Jerusalem, west of the Kidron Valley and east of the Tyropoeon valley, to the immediate south of the Temple Mount. The City of David is an important site of biblical archeology. Remains of a defensive network dating back to the Middle Bronze Age were found around the Gihon Spring; they continued to remain in use throughout subsequent periods. Two monumental Iron Age structures, known as the Large Stone Structure and the Stepped Stone Structure, were discovered at the site. Scholars debate if these may be identified with David or date to a later period. The site is also home to the Siloam Tunnel which according to a common hypothesis, was built by Hezekiah during the late 8th century BCE in preparation for an Assyrian siege. However, recent excavations at the site suggested an earlier origin in the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. Remains from the early Roman period include the Pool of Siloam and the Stepped Street, which stretched from the pool to the Temple Mount.The excavated parts of the archeological site are today part of the Jerusalem Walls National Park. The site is managed by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and operated by the Ir David Foundation. It is located in Wadi Hilweh, an extension of the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, East Jerusalem, intertwined with an Israeli settlement.

The St. Onuphrius Monastery (Greek: Ιερά Μονή του Οσίου Ονουφρίου) is an Orthodox monastery for women located in the potter's field (Akeldama in Aramean) that the Jewish elders purchased with the thirty pieces of silver returned by Judas Iscariot that had been given for betraying Jesus. The location is south of East Jerusalem and on the southern slope of the Gehenna valley, close to the Kidron Valley. Subject to the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, it is named after the fourth-century anchorite monk Saint Onuphrius.