Herod's Palace (Jerusalem)

Immediately north of the complex, in the area of today's Citadel and Jaffa Gate, Herod erected three huge towers, as an additional protection and last refuge in case of danger.

They were so exactly united to one another, that each tower looked like one entire rock of stone, so growing naturally, and afterward cut by the hand of the artificers into their present shape and corners; so little, or not at all, did their joints or connexion appear low as these towers were themselves on the north side of the wall, the king had a palace inwardly thereto adjoined, which exceeds all my ability to describe it; for it was so very curious as to want no cost nor skill in its construction, but was entirely walled about to the height of thirty cubits, and was adorned with towers at equal distances, and with large bed-chambers, that would contain beds for a hundred guests a-piece, in which the variety of the stones is not to be expressed; for a large quantity of those that were rare of that kind was collected together.

The number of the rooms was also very great, and the variety of the figures that were about them was prodigious; their furniture was complete, and the greatest part of the vessels that were put in them was of silver and gold.

There were, moreover, several groves of trees, and long walks through them, with deep canals, and cisterns, that in several parts were filled with brazen statues, through which the water ran out.

But indeed it is not possible to give a complete description of these palaces; and the very remembrance of them is a torment to one, as putting one in mind what vastly rich buildings that fire which was kindled by the robbers hath consumed; for these were not burnt by the Romans, but by these internal plotters, as we have already related, in the beginning of their rebellion.

[citation needed] In 66 CE, the Roman governor Gessius Florus set up a mass crucifixion of Jews, sparking the First Jewish Rebellion.

[citation needed] This was due to the fact that during the Byzantine Period, the Western Hill had been mistakenly identified as Mount Zion and the remains of the one surviving Herodian tower were presumed to be King David's palace.

Evidence shows that Crusaders fortified and heightened the 15 foot thick Hasmonean city wall and that Arabs, who conquered Jerusalem in 637, did the same.

[dubious – discuss][citation needed] During the 1160s the kings of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem built in the same general area a royal palace of their own, of which close to nothing remains.

[4][5] A 19th-century Egyptian barracks and later prison—locally known as the Kishle—was built adjacent to the Citadel's southern moat and was used, successively, by Ibrahim Pasha's troops (1834–1840/41), the Turks (1840/41–1917), the British (1917–1948), the Jordanians (1948–1967) and in parts by the Israeli police after 1967.