Gates of Jerusalem

During the era of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, there were four gates to the Old City, one on each side. The current walls, built by Suleiman the Magnificent, have a total of eleven gates, but only seven are open. Until 1887, each gate was closed before sunset and opened at sunrise. These gates have been known by a variety of names used in different historic periods and by different community groups.

The New Gate (Arabic: Bab al-Jedid‎; Hebrew: HaSha'ar HeChadash‎) is the newest gate in Jerusalem's Old City Walls, built in 1898 to provide direct access to the Christian Quarter for the visit of the German Emperor William II.

It is also called the Gate of Hammid after the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The gate is located in the northwestern part of the wall and faces north.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when Jordan captured East Jerusalem (which includes the Old City of Jerusalem) it was sealed off. It was reopened again in 1967 after Israel's capture of East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War.

The Huldah Gates are the two sets of now-blocked gates in the south wall of the Temple Mount, which is also one of Jerusalem's Old City walls. The western set is a double arched gate (the double gate), and the eastern is a triple arched gate (the triple gate). Each arch of the double gate led into an aisle of a passageway leading from the gate into the Mount, and to steps leading to the Mount's surface; when the al-Aqsa Mosque was built, the old steps were blocked, and the eastern aisle lengthened so that new steps from its end would exit north of the Mosque. The triple gate is similar, though the longer aisle is to the west, and its third aisle, on the east, forms the western boundary of the vaulted area known as Solomon's Stables.

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