Tours

Tour at the National Library

You are invited to tour the new building of the National Library.

Tour of the Botanical Garden at Mt. Scopus

The Botanical Garden at Mt. Scopus exhibits the native plants of Israel within their natural habitats. Within the confines of the Botanical Garden are ancient burial caves from the Second Temple period. Nowadays two Zionist leaders are buried there as well: Menachem Ussishkin and Dr. Yehuda Leib Pinsker. During the tour we will make the acquaintance of the secret places of the garden

Archaeological Tour at the City of David

The recent excavations in Jerusalem have exposed remains which are constantly adding to our knowledge of the complex past. This tour will walk you through some of the recent and ongoing excavations in the City of David, including the eastern slopes and the Givati Parking Lot excavations, where important remains from the Iron Age have been exposed in recent years, as well as the Siloam Pool and Stepped Street excavations, which have exposed monumental urban expansion in early Roman period.

Archaeological Tour at Ramat Rachel and Tel Motza

In the centuries when Judah was under Assyrian rule (from 732 until just after 630 BCE), economic, administrative, and political processes that were disconnected from the events in the capital in Jerusalem took place along the ridge south of Jerusalem between Armon Hanatziv and Ramat Rachel. The administrative center at Ramat Rachel, about four kilometers south of Jerusalem, was the most important and magnificent structure among those erected there at the end of the 8th century BCE. After it was founded as an administrative center in Judah under Assyrian rule, it continued (with only minor changes) to serve as an imperial administrative center in Judah throughout all years of Babylonian, Persian, and Ptolemaic rule.

This tour will illustrate the splendor and grandeur of the building, its location in the landscape, its importance in Jerusalem’s surroundings, and its role in administration, economy, and history of Judah. It will offer an unprecedented window into how temples operated and developed in the first millennium BCE, and will explore the relation of this temple to the Temple in Jerusalem.