City of David (archaeological site)

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 Large Stone Structure (Hebrew: מבנה האבן הגדול Mivne haEven haGadol) is the name given to a set of remains interpreted by the excavator, Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar, as being part of a single large public building in the City of David, presumably the oldest settlement core of Jerusalem. Mazar tentatively dated the findings to the tenth to ninth century BCE. Mazar chose this particular name for the alleged structure because of its proximity to another site known as the Stepped Stone Structure. Mazar announced the discovery on 4 August 2005, and stated that she believed it may be the remains of King David's palace as recorded in the Books of Samuel. The interpretation of the remains as those of one single building, the suggested date, and the association with King David have all been challenged by other well-known archaeologists. The archaeological dig was funded privately by Roger Hertog, an American banker.

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.

Ophel (Hebrew: עֹ֫פֶל ‘ōp̄el), also Graecised to ophlas, is the biblical term given to a certain part of a settlement or city that is elevated from its surroundings, and probably means fortified hill or risen area. In the Hebrew Bible, the term is used in reference to two cities: Jerusalem, as in the Book of Chronicles (2 Chronicles 27:3; 33:14) and Book of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 3:26; 11:21), and Samaria, mentioned in the Books of Kings (2 Book of Kings 5:24). The Mesha Stele, written in Moabite, a Canaanite language closely related to Biblical Hebrew, is the only extra-biblical source using the word, also in connection to a fortified place.

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.

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 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.

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.

The Dung Gate (Hebrew: שער האשפות Sha'ar Ha'ashpot), also known in Arabic as the Silwan Gate and Mughrabi Gate (Arabic: باب المغاربة Bab al-Maghariba), is one of the Gates of the Old City of Jerusalem. It was built as a small postern gate in the 16th century by the Ottomans, first widened for vehicular traffic in 1952 by the Jordanians, and again in 1985 by the Israeli authorities. The name Silwan Gate refers to the village of Silwan, that lies outside the gate, broadly southeast of it.

The Southern Wall (Hebrew: הכותל הדרומי HaKotel HaDromi) is the retaining wall of the Temple Mount at the southern end. It was built during King Herod's expansion of the Temple Mount platform southward on to the Ophel.

The al-Aqsa Library (مكتبة الأقصى Maktabat al-ʾAqṣā), also known as the al-Aqsa Mosque Library (مكتبة المسجد الأقصى Maktabat al-Masjid al-ʾAqṣā), is the assemblage of books in the al-Aqsa Compound (al-Ḥaram ash-Sharīf).

Porat Yosef Yeshiva (Hebrew: ישיבת פורת יוסף) is a Sephardic yeshiva in Jerusalem, with locations in both the Old City and the Geula neighborhood. The name Porat Yosef means "Joseph is a fruitful tree" after the biblical verse Genesis 49:22.