The Royal Stoa overlooked Jerusalem's residential and commercial quarters, and at its southwestern corner was the place from which a ram's horn was blown to announce the start of holy days.

This evidence has confirmed details given in the accounts of the historian Josephus, and has also allowed comparison of the Royal Stoa's decoration with that used in other, contemporaneous monumental buildings.

[13] The main entry to the Stoa from the city was via a monumental staircase which led up from the Tyropoeon Valley and then across Robinson's Arch, passing over the street and shops below.

[16] The expansion of the Temple Mount platform and the erection of the Royal Stoa required Herod's engineers to overcome the difficult topographic conditions.

The great effort invested in the construction of the Royal Stoa is a testimony of its immense importance to Herod and his status on the Temple Mount.

A client king appointed by the Romans, lacking legitimacy and unpopular with his subjects, Herod had initiated the Temple reconstruction to win favour among the Jews, but was forbidden from even entering the inner sanctum of his crowning achievement.

[19] In the forty years prior to the Great Revolt it served as the seat of the Sanhedrin, Judaism's supreme judicial court, which was moved from the Chamber of Stone to the "Shop" (Chanuyot in the Talmud), referring to the commercial activities conducted in the Stoa.

The Israel Antiquities Authority's numismatist Donald T. Ariel[23] has proposed that the Royal Stoa as the site for a mint, run by the priesthood.

On the pavement below the southwest corner of the Royal Stoa complex, a piece of stone coping was found which bears a dedicatory inscription which reads "to the Place of Trumpeting".

The soldiers also came to the rest of the cloisters that were in the outer [court of the] temple, whither the women and children, and a great mixed multitude of the people, fled, in number about six thousand.

Nor did any one of them escape with his life.The Great Revolt and the subsequent sacking of Jerusalem in 70 CE brought about the destruction of Herod's Temple, including the Royal Stoa, by members of the Roman X Fretensis, XII Fulminata, XV Apollinaris and V Macedonica legions under the command of emperor Vespasian's son Titus.

[29] It is likely that the stoa was modified during the initial phases of the revolt when the Temple Mount was fortified, first by Simon Bar Giora and then by John of Gischala.

Chemical analysis of the remains has shown that some of the materials underwent transformations requiring a minimum temperature of 800 K (980 °F)—a result of sustained, high-temperature burning consistent with Josephus's account of destruction in a large conflagration.

The motifs featured on the fragments found occasionally match patterns witnessed in other Second-Temple era public buildings unearthed in the region, while others reflect unique architectural characteristics.

These include floral motifs, rosettes, cable patterns similar to finds in the Hauran region of southern Syria and acanthus leaves featured in Roman architecture.