Jerusalem Today--Jerusalem today is a busy place. New construction is going on everywhere, bringing new industry, new highways, and, in the next few years, a whole new hotel scene. The constant stream of civic delights--museums, concerts, performances--developed by Teddy Kollek helped turn an austere outpost in the Judean hills into a lively, Mediterranean city with cafes, pubs, and restaurants packed to the brim with activity. The newly created pedestrian streets of the downtown center are flooded with strollers and, especially in summer, you'll find a nightly air of festive celebration.

A walled city is always a small town at heart, and for the past century, as Jerusalem expanded beyond its walls and across the surrounding hills, it remained in spirit a small town: inward looking, personal, always in touch with its local gossip and also with its thundering history. Now, for good or for ill, Jerusalem stands on the verge of becoming a true metropolis rather than the small city of exotic neighborhoods and communities the world has known for the past 60 years. What Jerusalem will be like as the decade leads to a new century is a point of international interest and concern. To be Jerusalem, a place that makes hearts thump throughout the world, you have to be unique. For 3,000 years, through splendor and desolation, glory and poverty, despite all imperfections, the earthly Jerusalem has always been a place that fitted its extraordinary legend. Will the New Jerusalem be able to maintain its mystique? With a major highway system routed just 30 feet from the walls of the Old City, so that visitors have to climb a pedestrian overpass in order to enter the Jaffa Gate? With many of the eccentric, small-scale 19th-century courtyards and neighborhoods of the New City (underappreciated in a town with Herodian, Byzantine, and Omayyid treasures to preserve) slated to be demolished and replaced with office blocks? With a new wave of 30 skyscrapers being planned for the previously low-rise center of West Jerusalem and with the arrival of such worldly establishments as Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Tower Records, and Toys R Us? At what point will Jerusalem begin to seem like anywhere else?

The city is at a crossroads politically and socially as well as physically. Can it become a capital for the Palestinian as well as the Israeli people? Will the religious Jewish community become the demographic and ruling majority in West Jerusalem and, if so, what will happen to the museums, parks, entertainment, and cultural institutions created by the city's secular community over the past 30 years? Should developers be allowed a free hand to Manhattanize Jerusalem or should limits be placed on the future growth of the city?

But Jerusalem's extraordinary power has never merely come from what can be seen. Not only has Jerusalem been a holy city for 3,000 years, far eclipsing the length of time that any other place has borne such a title, but it has been a holy city for all three great religions of the Western world: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is the most exotic of Israel's three principal cities as well as its seat of government. Old-time residents take an uncommon pride in living there.

Optimists believe that city planners will find a way to turn a mysterious walled holy city into a fast-paced holy megalopolis. For now, in many ways, the city walks a tightrope between its legend and the rapidly encroaching world of the 21st century.

AN ANCIENT CITY--Jerusalem ranks among those cities of the world that have had the longest record of continual habitation. It was in existence long before it was first mentioned in Pharonic records of the early 2nd millennium B.C., or in the Bible.

In Genesis it is recorded that Abraham visited Melchizedek, "king of Salem," one of the first known references to Jerusalem. However, for the next 800 years the city played no part in biblical or Jewish history. Then, in 1004 B.C., King David, the charismatic poet-warrior, captured Jerusalem, which was a small Jebusite/Canaanite city perched on a narrow hill just to the south of the present Old City walls. The city was considered neutral territory, situated on land not controlled by any of the 12 tribes of Israel, and seemed an ideal choice for a capital that would not exacerbate tribal rivalries. David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem from his former capital, Hebron. On the Ophel, a stretch of ascending land between the settlement of Jerusalem and the high place that was to become the Temple Mount, David built his palace and declared that henceforth Jerusalem would be the capital.

Under the reign of David's son Solomon, Jerusalem grew in importance. It was the center of a brief-lived empire that stretched from southern Syria to the Gulf of Eilat. African ivory and gold, cedarwood from Lebanon, spices, textiles, and pottery from distant lands adorned its houses and were bargained for in its markets. The Queen of Sheba came to Jerusalem with her entourage, bearing unimaginable treasures in exchange for Solomon's wisdom; tradition says she returned to her distant homeland (possibly in Africa) bearing his child. With the aid of Phoenician architects and artisans sent by his ally, King Hyram of Tyre, Solomon built the great Temple (960 B.C.) and constructed a more magnificent palace (although the Bible records the grandeur of Solomonic Jerusalem with awe, the city would actually have been a small, densely packed Early Iron Age settlement covering no more than several acres).

Under Solomon's visionless successors, the kingdom split in two: the larger kingdom of Israel to the north and the smaller kingdom of Judah to the south, with Jerusalem becoming the capital of small, struggling Judah.

The House of David continued to reign in Jerusalem for 3 1/2 centuries. Some of the Davidic rulers dispensed social justice and encouraged religious revivals under the influence of the great prophets; some of the kings turned to the worship of other gods. Invaders came and retreated. The northern kingdom of Israel, ruled by a succession of non-Davidic Jewish dynasties, fell to Assyria in the late 8th century B.C. and vanished from history, its population dispersed throughout Assyria's great empire. The Assyrian armies then stormed across Judah, destroying its towns and cities.

Only Jerusalem was able to avoid defeat and destruction, thanks to one of the most miraculous and fateful engineering feats in history. An underground tunnel was dug in 701 B.C. by King Hezikiah (with the encouragement of the Prophet Isaiah) from inside the city's walls to Jerusalem's water source, the Gihon Spring, outside the walls. The workers, digging from each end of the proposed tunnel, frantically hacked through the bedrock of Jerusalem in a wildly curving S-shaped route, yet somehow they managed to meet, and create underground access to the Gihon Spring (which was then camouflaged) before the dreaded Assyrians arrived to lay siege to the city. With its hidden water supply Jerusalem was able to withstand the Assyrian siege and was saved. The fragile beginnings of Western monotheism, precariously taking root in 8th-century B.C. Jerusalem, were not swept away into the dustbin of history. Perhaps more than any other structure built by human beings, the water tunnel of King Hezikiah, which still exists today, changed the course of history.

In the next century, the messages of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the religious reforms of King Josiah, strengthened Judean Judaism, so that unlike the Judaism of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, it would be able to survive both the defeats and exiles that lay ahead.

Jerusalem was conquered by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who in 586 B.C. destroyed the temple, sacked the city, and carried most of Jerusalem's inhabitants into exile in Babylonia. But Babylonia soon fell to the Persians, and in 540 B.C. King Cyrus of Persia allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild a modest Second Temple. Only a small remnant of the exiles chose to leave what had become a comfortable, cosmopolitan Jewish community in Babylonia and resettle the ruins of Jerusalem. The next centuries were remarkably quiet, and it was during this period that many believe the core of postbiblical Jewish religion and tradition was created in Jerusalem.

THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD--The city fell under the domain of Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. Hellenistic rule later passed to the Syrian-based Seleucids, and it was against their attempts to forcibly Hellenize the Jews that the Maccabees, a priestly family from the Judean village of Mod'in, led their famous revolt between 167 and 141 B.C. The festival of Hanukkah marks the recapture and rededication of the temple during the revolt against the Seleucids.

For the next century, Jerusalem was the capital of an independent Jewish Commonwealth ruled by the increasingly Hellenized descendants of the Maccabees, the Hasmonean Dynasty. To some Jews, however, including those who gravitated toward the ascetic Essene sect, the legendary House of David remained the spiritual and eternal royal dynasty; the Hasmoneans and the priesthood they controlled were merely transient temporal authorities. In the minds of many Jews living 2,000 years ago the dichotomy between the spiritual and earthly Jerusalem, nurtured through centuries of the psalmists, prophets, and the Babylonian exile began to take on new, mystically intense meaning. This dichotomy, with its many interpretations, has remained part of the Western world's concept of Jerusalem into modern times.

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION--Pompey claimed Jerusalem for Rome in 63 B.C., and in 37 B.C. Herod (whose Idumaean father converted to Judaism) was appointed king of Judea by the Romans. Perhaps in an effort to make himself loved by his reluctant and resentful subjects, or to impress his Roman overseers with his industry, Herod rebuilt Jerusalem and designed a palatial temple area that dwarfed the original Temple of Solomon, and replaced the less grand Second Temple that had been built in 520 B.C. by the Jews who returned from the Babylonian Captivity.

Herod died in 4 B.C. The city that he had built, with its fortress, towers, aqueducts, and vast temple complex, was the Jerusalem that Jesus knew. Herod's great temple complex, initially opposed by many Jews who felt it was too Roman in its grandeur, became a symbol of Jewish national and religious aspiration and a constant flash point in Jewish opposition to Roman rule. As never before, the temple became a center for Jewish pilgrimage from Judea, the Galilee, Babylonia, Persia, and all parts of the Roman Empire; over 100,000 pilgrims could be accommodated in Jerusalem during the great festivals of Passover and Sukkot. To a greater extent than ever, religion was Jerusalem's major industry, and it was increasingly big business. During this period, rabbinical Judaism was also developing, grounded in study, prayer, synagogue, and careful analysis of ethical and ritual rules governing Jews everywhere. This component of Judaism flourished alongside the priestly cult, which was centered on the temple at Jerusalem.

It was to the city that was a magnet for the ancient Jewish world that Jesus came to celebrate Passover, and it was in Jerusalem that under Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator, Jesus was imprisoned and crucified. According to most Christian traditions the Church of the Holy Sepulcher marks the site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, and the Via Dolorosa is the way Jesus trod, carrying the cross, from prison to Golgotha.

The Jewish rebellion against Roman rule in A.D. 66 drove the Roman occupiers from Jerusalem, and brought the Roman armies of Titus and Vespasian to reconquer Jerusalem. In A.D. 70, Rome starved out the population of Jerusalem, destroyed the city and its temple, and killed or sold into slavery most of its surviving inhabitants. The Roman Tenth Legion was stationed beside the ruins of the Jaffa Gate for more than 60 years to prevent Jews from filtering back and reestablishing their city.

There is evidence, however, that a small number of Jews and early Christians (who were considered to be a Jewish sect) may have continued to live in the ruins of Mount Zion, where they provided services for the Tenth Legion's camp. Jews were permitted to visit Jerusalem during the years after the Roman destruction and were still able to identify the exact locations of specific holy sites among the ruins. Talmudic lore records that a group of rabbis walking on the Temple Mount noticed that a fox had made its lair in the wreckage of the Holy of Holies. Aging witnesses to Jesus' last days in Jerusalem would have been able to pass on their memories of where those events took place to a younger generation. Although the city was now desolate, the powerful charisma of Jerusalem continued to grow.

Bar Kokhba's revolt in A.D. 132, triggered by the decision of the Emperor Hadrian to rebuild Jerusalem as a non-Jewish Roman outpost, returned the ruined city to the Jews for 3 short years. The temple site was rededicated, though probably not rebuilt, and daily sacrifice was reinstated. The revolt ended in A.D. 135 with even greater military disaster for the Jews than the revolt of A.D. 70. According to some estimates, half a million civilians died in each of the revolts against Rome, numbers unheard of in ancient warfare. Hadrian leveled the ruins of Jerusalem, sowed the land with salt, and, with an entirely different city plan and arrangement of streets, built a Roman city called "Aelia Capitolina" in honor of the imperial family and the Roman god Jupiter Capitolina. Hadrian filled Aelia Capitolina with pagan temples and barred Jews from residing in the city for all time. Herod's great Temple Mount platform, and its great retaining walls, too massive and still too politically sensitive to demolish, were among the few features from Herodian Jerusalem that remained. According to some historians, a Roman temple (or at least, an altar) may have been installed on the site of the Jerusalem temple itself. Jews were generally allowed into the city only to visit the ruins of the Temple Mount and only on the ninth day of the month of Av, the anniversary of the temple's destruction.

THE BYZANTINES--Jerusalem's 200-year stint as an ordinary town ended with the Emperor Constantine, who converted the Roman empire to Christianity and turned Jerusalem into a Christian holy city. He built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in approximately A.D. 330, and the Byzantine emperor, Justinian, 200 years later, renovated and enlarged it. Jerusalem regained its ancient name, and again became an extraordinary destination for religious pilgrimage from all over the ancient world--this time by followers of a new religion. The city was filled with churches, monasteries, and convents, and daily religious processions. Jews were forbidden to reside in Byzantine Jerusalem, but the tradition, begun after the Bar Kochba Revolt in A.D. 135, of allowing Jews to visit the city and mourn the loss of the Temple, continued. At times, Jews were allowed only to view the city from the Mount of Olives.

ISLAM & THE CRUSADES--Caliph Omar, second successor to Muhammed, began the Muslim occupation of Jerusalem in A.D. 638. In the decades after his death, according to his wishes that the Temple Mount not lie in ruins, with its sacred rock exposed to the elements, Caliph Abd el-Malik built the masterpiece Dome of the Rock (A.D. 687-91) marking the spot from which the Prophet Muhammad, in his miraculous night journey, rose from the earth to glimpse Paradise. By A.D. 720, the Al Aksa Mosque, Islam's third holiest sanctuary, had taken its place at the southern edge of the Temple Mount. Under the tolerant rule of the early Muslims, Jews were allowed again to reside in Jerusalem and the Christian community continued to flourish.

Around the year A.D. 1000, the mad Caliph Al Hakim, ruling from Egypt, began a wave of anti-Christian persecution that culminated in the burning of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Feudal Europe responded with the Crusades, and in the wars that followed, the mystical concept of Jerusalem was burned more strongly than ever into the traditions of both Christianity and Islam. After the initial success of the First Crusade in 1099, Jerusalem changed hands several times between Crusaders and Muslims (most notably under Saladin). The Crusader Church of Saint Anne (A.D. 1147), with its near miraculous acoustics, is Jerusalem's great architectural treasure from this era. Hundreds of architectural fragments from Crusader buildings, in secondary use adorning Mameluke and Ottoman period buildings throughout the Old City, attest to the massive destruction inflicted on the city during these centuries. The entire Jewish population of Jerusalem was massacred when Crusader armies captured the city in 1099, but by the year 1260, not long after the Crusaders had been dislodged, a small Jewish community was reestablished.

TURKISH RULE--In 1517 the Ottoman Turks, also Muslims, took control of Jerusalem. In an esthetic stroke of genius, the 16th-century Ottoman rulers faced the deteriorating exterior of the Dome of the Rock with dramatic cobalt blue and turquoise ceramic tiles from Persia and Anatolia. The Ottomans also rebuilt the magnificent walls around Jerusalem in 1538, but these largely ceremonial fortifications (gunpowder and cannon had made such defensive structures obsolete) surrounded a depopulated community devastated by centuries of Crusader wars and struggling to survive. By the early 19th century, the city's population, estimated to have been close to 100,000 in Herodian times, had shrunk to less than 15,000. Only in the second half of the 19th century did the city begin to come alive again, with its Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities spreading into neighborhoods beyond the walls of the Old City.

In the last decades of the 19th century, as the European powers vied for influence in this strategic portion of the floundering Ottoman Empire, each government planted its flag in Jerusalem under the guise of vast church-related construction projects. The number of monuments to European nationalism that date from this brief era is amazing. Germany's massive neo-Romanesque Dormition Church and Monastery on Mount Zion recalls Worms Cathedral overlooking the Rhine; the delicate, Renaissance-inspired Holy Trinity Church in the Russian Compound echoes the late 15th-century Cathedral of the Assumption in the Kremlin; St. George's Cathedral in East Jerusalem, completed in 1912, is an enclave of neo-Gothic Britain built from Jerusalem stone, with a Jerusalem-stone bell tower and cloister that calls to mind an almost hallucinatory fragment of Magdalene College at Oxford. The exotically medieval Russian Church of Saint Mary Magdalene with its gilded onion-shaped domes transformed the vista of the Mount of Olives. Florentine, Ethiopian, and French architecture sprang up across the city in the form of hospitals, churches, convents, and pilgrimage facilities.