The Other Nine-Tenths of the Wall
The prayer plaza shows you about two hundred feet of Herod’s retaining wall. The wall runs roughly sixteen hundred feet. The rest lies underground, and you can walk that stretch.
Every army that sacked Jerusalem left rubble behind, and every generation that rebuilt the city raised the streets a little higher. Walk the Old City today and the Jerusalem of the Gospels lies somewhere beneath your shoes. In the Western Wall Tunnels a visitor can go down and walk beside it. That hour is one of my favorites in Jerusalem, and groups have to book ahead.
Why the wall is buried
Herod’s engineers built the retaining walls of the temple platform from ground level upward, and ground level then was far below ground level now. Nineteen centuries of destruction and rebuilding raised the city on top of itself. Later builders treated the massive wall as a ready-made back support and simply built against it, roofing over the old street and putting houses above.
So this is not a tunnel in the mining sense. Workers cleared out the ancient street and the rooms beside the wall, and reopened them underneath a living neighborhood.
What you see along the way
The route begins under Wilson’s Arch, a vast arch named for the British officer who surveyed here in the 1860s. That arch carried a bridge from the wealthy upper city across the valley and onto the temple platform, so priests and worshippers could walk over the valley. Standing beneath the span gives you the scale.
Farther along, the passage runs beside the wall itself, course upon course of Herodian stone, each block cut with a flat recessed border around its face. Then you reach the block that stops everyone.
The Western Stone runs roughly forty-five feet long and ten feet high, and weighs hundreds of tons. Ancient builders rarely moved a stone of that size anywhere in the world. The block sits several courses up, fitted so precisely that the joints are hard to find, and laid without mortar.
Beyond that stone, a blocked gateway called Warren’s Gate once led onto the temple platform. That doorway matters because of simple geometry: this is the closest a person can physically get to where the Holy of Holies most likely stood. Today, worshippers usually fill the small prayer area there.
The route also passes a stretch of Herodian street paving, a quarry where some of the stone was cut, and a water channel that is older than Herod’s wall.
What the tunnels do to your sense of scale
At the temple steps you understand the temple as an experience: crowds, immersion pools, a broad stair, pilgrims climbing. In the tunnels you understand the temple as engineering. Herod doubled the size of a hilltop by building retaining walls tall enough to hold back a mountain of fill, using stones that would challenge modern equipment.
Then notice the finish on the buried courses. Nobody was ever going to see those stones once the fill went in, and Herod’s masons cut and dressed them to that standard anyway.
Booking a Western Wall Tunnels tour
Tours are guided only and must be reserved in advance, often well in advance. Plan on about ninety minutes.
The passage narrows in places, includes steps and low sections, and stays underground throughout. Anyone who dislikes enclosed spaces should know that before booking. Most people of ordinary mobility manage the route comfortably, though the route will not work for anyone who needs a wheelchair or a walker.
Dress as you would for the Western Wall plaza, since the route passes active prayer areas.
Come and See
How does seeing the buried courses of the wall change the scale of the temple in your mind?
Go underground with us.
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Sources and Further Reading
- Jodi Magness, The Archaeology of the Holy Land: From the Destruction of Solomon’s Temple to the Muslim Conquest (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
- Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700, 5th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2008).
- Leen Ritmeyer, The Quest: Revealing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (Carta, 2006).
