Tag Archives: Old City

Monastery of St. John the Baptist Prodomos

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It really never ceases to amaze me. I will be walking through the Old City, I’ll see an alley way and venture in, and I’ll discover something new that I didn’t know existed until then. This is exactly what happened when I came across the Monastery of St. John the Baptist Prodomos on Shouk Abtimous Street of the Christian Quarter.

1/640, f/5.6, ISO 100, -1 EV

1/640, f/5.6, ISO 100, -1 EV

The monastery is owned by the Greek Orthodox Church and is OLD. Today’s church is built on a much older structure. I initially fell in love with the courtyard. Stunning. I loved the blue colors (reminds me of Greece) and the drinking wells.

1/500 sec at f/4.5

1/500 sec at f/4.5

118729 24 Jan 15_7068

1/50, f/5.6, ISO 100

1/50, f/5.6, ISO 100

The church, built in the 5th century was demolished by the Persians in 614. During Crusader times, it was known as the “Knights of St. John Hospital.” The Crusaders renovated the current structure. It was purchased in 1674 by the Franciscan Order.

1/30, f/2.8, ISO 2500

1/30, f/2.8, ISO 2500

1/40, f/4.5, ISO 2500, 1 EV

1/40, f/4.5, ISO 2500, 1 EV

Perhaps most interesting is what’s below the modern church. If you ask one of the Sisters, and give a small donation, they will open the iron door to the Byzantine church. It is was discovered and excavated in 1890. The excavators found a reliquary and a piece of the Holy Cross and other relics of St. John, Peter, and other Apostles.

1/25, f/2.8, ISO 640, 1 EV

1/25, f/2.8, ISO 640, 1 EV

1/25, f/2.8, ISO 2000, -1 EV

1/25, f/2.8, ISO 2000, -1 EV

1/25, f/2.8, ISO 3200, -1 EV

1/25, f/2.8, ISO 3200, -1 EV

It’s amazing to be standing in a structure that was used 1500 years ago!

Mark Twain and Herman Melville in Jerusalem

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This week I took a day hike through the Old City looking for the two primary hotels used by travelers from the in the 19th century. Of note, Mark Twain was in Jerusalem in 1867 and he wrote about his experience in “Innocents Abroad.”

Finding Mark Twain’s hotel was easy, as it is an infamous building just inside the Damascus Gate. Twain stayed in the Mediterranean Hotel for only two days. The building was then purchased from a Christian owner in the 1880s by Moshe Wittenberg who renamed it as Wittenberg House. In the 1980s Ariel Sharon purchased one of the apartments – a thorn in the side of the local Palestinian residents as he didn’t actually live there – it was simply to create a provocation to have a settlement in the Arab section of the Old City. The apartment was eventually sold to the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish group, Ateret Cohanim.

I specially like the windows in the building. It took me a few minutes to find a good angle.

1/1000 sec at f/5.6

1/1000 sec at f/5.6

Actually, there were three versions of the famous Mediterranean Hotel. Twain stayed in the one near the Damascus Gate. Herman Melville stayed in the one at the Patriarch’s Pool not far from Jaffa Gate. It is almost impossible to get a shot of the front of the building of the one at the Patriarch’s Pool, as the road in front of the building is narrow. But the angle makes for an interesting shot. I still haven’t found the third incarnation of the hotel. But I will!

1/800 sec at f/4.5

1/800 sec at f/4.5

However, the back side of the building faces the Patriarch’s Pool. This ancient reservoir has many names: Hezekiah’s Pool, the Pool of Pillars, or the Pool of the Patriarch’s Bath. It is 73 m by 43 m and can hold about 11,356,235 liters! Today, it is impossible to get to the pool, except through the good graces of Al Quds University.

Walking to the pool, we enter a beautiful courtyard and walk through a sort of ante-room, with a beautiful vaulted ceiling.

1/80 sec at f/7.1

1/80 sec at f/7.1

1/500 sec at f/4.5

1/500 sec at f/4.5

You’ve got to love the couches!

1/25 set at f/4.0, ISO 640

1/25 set at f/4.0, ISO 640

1/640 sec at f/5.6

1/640 sec at f/5.6

Unfortunately, it is a filthy! Here in this shot you can see the back of Melville’s Mediterranean Hotel. I hope that for him it wasn’t so disgusting.

But, there’s still a great view of the city from the pool (looking north – west).

1/1600 sec at f/5.6, ISO 200

1/1600 sec at f/5.6, ISO 200

Devotion in the Old City

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One can never get enough of walking through the Old City. Usually, when I take visitors around, we have a specific circuit that I like to follow: going from the Jaffa Gate to the Armenian Quarter and then to the Jewish Quarter, and then finishing up for a big lunch in the Arab Quarter. At some point, I will more fully describe this short tour of the Old City, but in the mean time, I’d like to focus on the interesting people that one can encounter.

Being the “center of the world” means that people are naturally drawn to the Old City. And, as opposed to old cities around the world, this one is a fully functioning city: there are large residential areas, Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, inns, hospices, monasteries, schools and grocery stores. One can walk for hours up and down the hills and see incredible human variety.

We’ll start with the Western Wall. In Hebrew it is called the Kotel HaMa’arvi (הכותל המערבי), which literally means the “western wall”. In Arabic it is called the Hayat Al-buraq (البراق‎ حائط literally: the Buraq Wall). The revered wall was built in 19 BCE by King Herod and is the last standing retaining wall of the Second Temple. Not being a religious person, the wall doesn’t do much for me, but I do enjoy observing the devotion of the visitors.

f/2.8, 1/400 sec. 50 mm, ISO 100

f/2.8, 1/400 sec. 50 mm, ISO 100

f/2.8, 1/4000 sec. 50 mm, ISO 100

Even cops, in their riot gear take a break for some devotion and praying. f/2.8, 1/4000 sec. 50 mm, ISO 100

From here we move to the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is the site revered as the Calvary, were Jesus was crucified and later buried. I’m not going to devote a large part of this post to describing the Church. It is very big and impressive, and so deserved a post for itself. It is the meeting place for Christians in the Old City, and if you hang around there enough, you will be immersed in the great variety of humanity that visits the Church every day.

1/4000 sec. f/2.0, ISO 100, 50 mm

It turns out that even Franciscan monks have dry cleaning. 1/4000 sec. f/2.0, ISO 100, 50 mm

Looking at the Church from the other direction, one can see the Via Dolorosa, and there is always a lot of good people watching there.

1/640 sec. f/4.0, ISO 100, 50 mm

1/640 sec. f/4.0, ISO 100, 50 mm

On top of the church is a monastery for the Ethiopian Orthodox community. The community has no property in the church, but rather has a gathering place alongside the Coptic Monastery. It’s a small courtyard, and leads into a chapel and a church. King Solomon, as we know, had quite a bit of dealings with the Queen of Sheba, and legend has it that when the Queen returned home, she was pregnant with Menelik (who would become the first Ethiopian emperor).

f/5.0, 1/2000 sec. 50 mm, ISO 100

f/5.0, 1/2000 sec. 50 mm, ISO 100

But, like I say, the Old City attracts all religions. Often, because of Israeli policy and control over the Muslim holy sites, prayer is restricted on the Haram Al Sharif (or in Hebrew: the Temple Mount), and so people are forced to show their devotion in make-shift meeting places.

f/2.8, 1/320 sec. 50 mm, ISO 100

These young men are were not allowed to pray in the mosques, and so line up their prayer rugs and face the Haram Al Sharif. f/2.8, 1/320 sec. 50 mm, ISO 100

Walls and angles

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For those of us who live in Jerusalem, we see the Old City almost every day. For most of us, it still strikes us as being a sort of magical place. Kind of like being in a sort of time-travel, where cultures and religions mix, where there are constant noises and smells, and lots and lots of crowds.

Shooting the Old City is always challenging, since so many photographers have taken on the subject. I write here: “shooting the Old City” as opposed to “shooting in the Old City” since I like to try to think that the Old City is a character on its own accord. In this series of shots I tried to focus on the city walls: from the first few shots, I am standing on the Mount of Olives looking westward. This is a seldom used park, and for good reasons. You are in the heart of Eastern Jerusalem, and a bit exposed: I don’t think that I would want to shoot there unless I was in a big group (which I was).

The dominant part of the Old City is the Temple Mount or Haram El Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), as it is the home of the two prominent mosques: Mosque of Omar and El Aksa. All photos of the area include the two mosques, so I wasn’t too concerned with showing them, hence my use of a depth of field which would allow me to hint at the structures. You’d really have to know that they were there if you see the shots. So, first I’ll show the Mosque of Omar (or Dome of the Rock), and then I’ll let you see the abstraction.

(f/22, 1/60 sec, ISO 100, 80 mm).

(f/22, 1/60 sec, ISO 100, 80 mm).

I am leaving these in black and white, since I think that the mosque is so powerfully colored that I don’t want to distract from the overall scene.

(f/5.6, 1/640 sec, 100 ISO, 105 mm)

(f/5.6, 1/640 sec, 100 ISO, 105 mm)

As you get closer to the city, you can see the beauty of the walls. Many of the stones have been recycled over the ages, and I love the way they come together. I was luck this day, as there were some cloud (most of the year it is too hot for clouds).

(f/22, 1/5 sec, 100 ISO, 32 mm)

(f/22, 1/5 sec, 100 ISO, 32 mm)

Here, we’re walking from Jaffa Gate to the Zion Gate. Most of the walls were built during the Ottoman reign in Jerusalem. The walls were rebuilt between 1535 – 1538, under the orders of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. An interesting thing to note are the  arrowslits (or balistaria). If you notice, they are not correctly placed (they are too low and at incorrect angles): they were put in for show by the builders. They are purely ornamental.

(f/16, 1/60 sec, 100 ISO, 200 mm)

(f/16, 1/60 sec, 100 ISO, 200 mm)

Despite the monochromatic nature of the walls, there is often some color around them. The city has planted flowers where possible, and they always add some color.

(f/18, 1/40 sec, 100 ISO, 85mm)

(f/18, 1/40 sec, 100 ISO, 85mm)

In the future, I’ll add a lot more about the city walls: there’s a lot to show, and a lot of history.

When in the Old City or its environs, I don’t take Shooby: it’s too crowed and people are often not happy to see a big dog in crowded spaces. Besides, he’s always a bit stressed when in the Old City. So, no Shooby today.