Walls of Jerusalem
— stone that has held its shape through forty centuries.
Not only on a wall.
“The walls that ring the Old City of Jerusalem in pale Jerusalem limestone, rebuilt in their present line by Suleiman the Magnificent between 1535 and 1538. About four kilometres around, twelve metres high in most stretches, broken by seven open gates and one sealed shut. The stone catches the light differently each hour; by late afternoon it carries the colour the city is named for.
Walls of Jerusalem, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The walls enclose the Old City of Jerusalem, a roughly one-square-kilometre quarter inside the modern city, in the Judean Hills about 760 m above sea level. The present circuit was raised by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent between 1535 and 1538 on the line of earlier Byzantine and Crusader defences. The walls run about 4 km around, average 12 m in height, and are pierced by seven open gates: Damascus, Herod, Lions, Dung, Zion, Jaffa, and New. The Old City and its walls were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.
The walls are built of the same pale limestone the city itself sits on, a Cretaceous formation locally called meleke. The stone is soft enough to dress finely when first quarried and hardens on exposure to the air. Suleiman's masons used courses of large dressed blocks at the base and smaller stones above, with reused Roman and Crusader fragments visible in several stretches. At a certain hour before sundown the stone reads gold; the name Jerusalem of Gold comes from this colour.
The walls themselves can be walked along the Ramparts Walk, a two-section route maintained by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, with separate entries at Jaffa Gate and Damascus Gate. A modest entry fee is collected. The Old City inside has no vehicular access along most of its lanes; visitors enter on foot through any of the open gates. Damascus Gate carries the heaviest pedestrian traffic, particularly on Fridays. Early morning and late afternoon are the cool hours and the best light on the stone.