About Zion Gate
The Zion Gate is named after Mount Zion which is directly outside the city walls adjacent to the gate. It is also called David’s Gate as it leads directly into the Jewish Quarter and Armenian Quarter. It was built by The Turkish leader Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1540.
Design of the Gate
The Zion Gate is “L” shaped, designed to increase the security of the gate and slow down incoming attackers. The gate has a second floor equipped with defensive installations including a balcony that enabled pouring of boiling oil on the attacking enemy. Adjacent to the entrance is a small window in the stone wall with an arrow slit where guards could aim at their attackers.
Façade of the Gate
The façade bears the “scars” of bullet holes from the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. Although the Jewish forces managed to reach the Jewish Quarter, but they were forced to retreat leaving Jordan to occupy the Old City of Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967; hence the gate got its name, the “Wounded Gate”. During the Jordanian rule, the gate remained closed.
- The gate is also called “Gate of the Jews” perhaps because it leads to the Jewish Quarter.
- In the 19th century, some unoccupied ground adjacent to Zion Gate was said to be occupied solely by lepers.
- As the British troops left Jerusalem in 1948, a British officer presented Rabbi Mordechai Weingarten with an old, rusty foot-long key to Zion Gate as a gift from England to the Jewish people.
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