These are the sites. The best way to actually see them, properly connected rather than as five separate stops, is with a guide who can carry the story between them.
1. The City of David
Still the most concentrated dose of Jewish archaeology in the city: Hezekiah's Tunnel, the Pool of Siloam, the Stepped Stone Structure, and the "House of Bullae" excavation that turned up seals belonging to officials named in the Book of Jeremiah. If you only visit one site on this list, make it this one.
2. The Western Wall Tunnels
Walking beneath the modern plaza, along an exposed Herodian-era street, brings you closer to the original Temple Mount's foundation stones than almost anywhere else in the city. It's a genuinely different feeling from praying at the plaza above, seeing the same structure from underneath its own history.
3. The Israel Museum's Shrine of the Book
Home to the Dead Sea Scrolls, alongside the museum's scale model of Second Temple period Jerusalem, this isn't inside the Old City walls, but it belongs on this list regardless. Seeing the physical scrolls that carry some of the oldest surviving biblical texts changes how the rest of your Jerusalem archaeology makes sense.
4. The Davidson Center and Archaeological Garden
At the base of the Temple Mount's southern wall, this site preserves Herodian-period paving and structures from the Second Temple era, including remains connected to the pilgrimage routes ordinary Jews would have walked toward the Temple. It's quieter than the Western Wall plaza, and worth the short walk around.
5. The Burnt House
A preserved home in the Jewish Quarter, belonging to a priestly family, destroyed in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Standing inside a home from that exact moment in history does something a plaque never quite manages.
The best way to see this list: book a guide who connects these sites into one story rather than five unrelated stops. That's exactly what my Old City tour is built around, and if you'd rather read about specific finds first, my 5 archaeological finds in the City of David covers that side of the story.
Let's walk through the actual archaeology, not just the highlights.
Tell me how much time you've got, and I'll build the route.
See the Old City tour
Written by Orit Kropp
Licensed by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, Jerusalem-based, and endlessly enthusiastic about bringing the Tanach to life on the ground where it happened.