Esplanade of the Mosques in Jerusalem

The Esplanade of the Mosques or Mount Temple is for many reasons one of the most important religious sites for two out of the three “main religions” : Judaism and Islam. This esplanade is situated in the old city of Jerusalem : on its eastern side, it's opposite to the imposing mount of Olives, its southern side looks onto the ruins of Jerusalem from the time of King David and its western side is overlooked by the old town with all its history and the Wailing Wall is below it.

Now a days

Before looking to the past, it's interesting to see what one can find at present on Mount Temple. Along with the two main buildings, the Golden dome and the Al-Aksa Mosque, the esplanade also has commemorative buildings, a fountain for ablutions before praying, minarets, domes and Madrassa, which are rooms for study of the Koran.

In history

If you have ever questioned yourself to try to understand why Mount Temple is a place of endless controversy between Jews and Muslims, you must definitely be interested in its history.

This starts almost 4 000 years ago at a time when kings and emperors reigned over the world. Almost 4 000 years ago, King Solomon had a Temple built on “this famous esplanade” in honour of the God of Israel, a temple that was destroyed for the first time (-568) by Nabuchodonosore, king of the Babylonian empire. It was rebuilt later only to be destroyed again (+70 ) by the Roman Emperor Titus whose arch in Rome has an engraving showing Jewish slaves surrounded by roman soldiers transporting items stolen from the Temple : the Menorah (candleabra), the table of shewbread and the Alliance Arc containing the Law tablets.

One of the main builders of the second Temple was without doubt King Herod and now one can still visit the structures that he put in place to restructure and rebuild the Temple on Mount Moriah, Mount Temple.

Centuries later only a few years after the creation of Islam by the prophet Muhammad, the golden dome or the Dome of the rock was built in 691 after the construction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 637.

So the Dome of the Rock is particularly important for Muslims as it is the place where Muhammad is said to have ascended to Heaven on the back of his Buraq after his arrival from Mecca (beginning of the 7th century). The golden dome contains the rock from which Muhammad rose to Heaven.

This makes Mount Temple the third most holy site in Islam after Mecca and Medina.

Visit to Mount Temple : Opening hours and general rules

Access to Mount Temple is open generally every day from Sunday to Thursday:

• Summer: 7.30am – 11.00 and 13.30 – 14.30
• Winter : 7.00am – 10.30 and 12.30- 13.30

To visit Mount Temple you need to take note of the following:

• Have identity papers (preferably a foreign passport)
• There's a “customs “ check
• Police forbid the insertion of Jewish holy objects (there's an unsupervised cupboard to store these objects)
• Some places on Mount Temple are forbidden to Jews
• Clothing that doesn't cover almost all of the body may cause problems