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The Old City of Jerusalem is an ancient and holy place for three religions - Christian, Muslim and Jewish. Many people live in the Old City and many come from all over the world to visit. We can see the city walls, the gates and the beautiful, shining gold and silver domes of the Old City from many viewpoints in Jerusalem and some of us can see them every day from our homes. The Old City is very pretty at night when the lights are on -shining on the huge stones of the walls and lighting up the holy buildings and high towers.. The Old City is divided into four quarters - the Armenian Quarter, the Christian Quarter, the Jewish Quarter and the Muslim Quarter. Each quarter has its own personality, but most of the Old City is very crowded with narrow arch-covered streets and stone buildings, many with domed roofs. Mixed together are houses, schools churches, mosques, synagogues, museums. Towers can be seen in every direction. There are only a few trees.
You can see all kinds of stores and markets stalls. Some sell goods for the local people and others for tourists. For example, you can buy colorful fruits and nuts and spices. You can bargain for embroidered clothes, hand-painted tiles, ancient coins and pottery and special religious objects. If you are hungry, the wonderful smells will tempt you to buy delicious spicy Oriental snacks and sticky sweetmeats. The market areas are very noisy. People bargain and shout and everywhere you can hear the sound of wheeled carts as men and boys pull them over the stony pavements.
There are other sounds too - the sounds of people praying. Pilgrims from all over the world mix with the local religious communities. Christians come to visit the many churches, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and to move along the Stations of the Cross. Muslims come to pray on the Temple Mount in the silver-domed Mosque of El-Aksa. Also on the Temple Mount is the magnificent, shining golden Dome of the Rock.
Below the Temple Mount is the place that our class knows best in the Old City - the Western Wall. The Wall , built of massive and magnificent stones, is what remains of the Second Temple area . It has been a treasured site for the Jewish people for nearly 2,000 years. It looks, feels and sounds like an ancient place. To many, it is a very holy place. Many of the boys in our class go to the wall with their families for their Bar-Mitzvah ceremony when they are thirteen years old. Then they join the crowds of worshippers you always see in front of the Wall, wearing their traditional prayer shawls and skullcaps and holding up the holy scrolls.. The sounds of prayer you hear are mixed with the sound flapping of the wings of the birds who live here among the stones. And you hear the sound of weeping - the Western Wall is also a place for people who have sadness in their lives.
When you stand in front of the Wall you can see thousands of little pieces of paper pushed into the cracks between the immense stones. These are the prayers, wishes and hopes of people who come here from all over the world. Some of our class put little notes in too. One of the girls (at least one) wrote a simple wish for peace in this city.
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