[3] The entrance to Zedekiah's Cave is just beneath the Old City wall, between the Damascus and Herod Gates, about 500 feet (150 m) east of the former.

Chisel marks are visible in many sections and in some galleries huge, nearly finished building blocks destined for some long-ago structure are locked into the rock where the stonecutters left them centuries ago.

In a few places the stones are marked in languages of Arabic, Latin, Greek, Armenian and English by means of charcoal and engraved etchings (e.g., "W. E. Blackstone Jan. 1889").

[2] The Roman-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus writes about the "Royal Caverns" of the Old City,[5] which may have been a reference to Zedekiah's Cave.

[6] Suleiman the Magnificent (1494–1566), the Ottoman sultan who built the present walls around the Old City, also apparently mined the quarry, ultimately sealing it up around 1540 because of security concerns.

In 1854 the American missionary James Turner Barclay followed rumors of a cavern near the Damascus Gate, and, apparently with the help of his dog, discovered the entrance.

[8] In 1873, French archeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau uncovered a crude carving of a winged creature in a small niche in the cave.

It had two long narrow wings that opened like a pair of scissors, a curled tail and a bearded human head under a conical headdress.

In 1968, a resident of East Jerusalem contacted the Israeli Ministry of Finance with a claim that, during the Ottoman period, his grandfather had buried three cases of gold in Zedekiah's Cave.

[12] The wall generally attributed to the Ottoman era was found to have been constructed earlier, in the Mamluk period (13th century).

The meleke limestone of the quarry – which is strong, well suited to carving, and resistant to erosion – is thought to have been used for royal buildings.

The soldiers chased the buck and arrived at the exit of the cave just as Zedekiah was coming out, enabling them to capture and blind him.