It carried traffic up from ancient Jerusalem's Lower Market area and over the Tyropoeon street to the Royal Stoa complex on the esplanade of the Mount.

The arch is named after Biblical scholar Edward Robinson who identified its remnants in 1838, though it was noticed earlier by Frederick Catherwood.

The Royal Stoa, an exceptionally large basilica complex which served various commercial and legal functions, looked down on the intersection from atop the Temple platform.

[6] This was one of four gates along the western wall of the compound:[7] Now in the western quarters of the enclosure of the temple there were four gates; the first led to the king's palace, and went to a passage over the intermediate valley; two more led to the suburbs of the city; and the last led to the other city, where the road descended into the valley by a great number of steps, and thence up again by the ascent for the city lay over against the temple in the manner of a theater, and was encompassed with a deep valley along the entire south quarter.The conventional view of modern-archaeologists is to reckon the counting of these four gates (e.g. 1, 2, 3 and 4) from left to right, as one would count in Western societies, making Robinson's Arch the fourth and last in a row, counting from left to right.

It has traditionally been blamed on the Roman legions which destroyed the Temple Mount enclosure and eventually set fire to the entire city.

[20] By wrecking the overpass, as well as the viaduct at Wilson's Arch to the north, the defenders made access to the Temple platform much more difficult for besieging forces.

[23] South of the Temple Mount, excavators have uncovered an inscribed Roman milestone bearing the names of Vespasian and Titus, fashioned from one of the staircase handrails which stood on top of the arch.

[25][26] At the first view of these walls, I was led to the persuasion, that the lower portions had belonged to the ancient temple; and every subsequent visit only served to strengthen this conviction.

The size of the stones and the heterogeneous character of the walls, render it a matter beyond all doubt, that the former were never laid in their present places by the Muhammedans; and the peculiar form in which they are hewn, does not properly belong, so far as I know, either to Saracenic or to Roman architecture.

At this remark a train of thought flashed upon my mind, which I hardly dared to follow out, until I had again repaired to the spot, in order to satisfy myself with my own eyes, as to the truth or falsehood of the suggestion.

I found it even so!…This arch could only have belonged to The Bridge, which according to Josephus led from this part of the temple to the Xystus on Zion; and it proves incontestably the antiquity of that portion of the wall from which it springs….

Thus we are led irresistibly to the conclusion, that the area of the Jewish temple was identical on its western, eastern, and southern sides, with the present enclosure of the Haram.

Four stone courses of the eastern spring of the arch, consisting of a row of impost blocks and three layers of voussoirs, have survived to modern times.

[7] The ancient street level lay far underground, buried by debris from destruction of structures on the Temple Mount and later fill dumped into the Tyropoeon Valley over the centuries.

Robinson believed he had identified the eastern edge of a bridge that linked the Temple Compound with the Upper City which lay on the ridge to the west.

[4] During his investigations of 1867–1870, Charles Warren noted the presence of a large pier 13 metres (43 ft) west of the wall and the remains of the arch.

Within its base were found four small hollow spaces, possibly for shops opening onto the Herodian–era Tyropoeon street that passes beneath the arch.

[4][30] South of the building, excavators found the remains of six vault–supporting piers, gradually decreasing in height southwards over a distance of 35 metres (115 ft).

In 2003 Israel's Supreme Court disallowed women from reading the Torah or wearing traditional prayer shawls at the plaza itself, yet instructed the Israeli government to prepare the site of Robinson's Arch to host such events.

[34] Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, has also expressed the opinion that "The wall as it's been understood by the Jewish people does not mean Robinson's Arch ...