Virtual Tour Gives Tourists Chance to Explore Jerusalem’s Past

The Israel Antiquities Authority and the East Jerusalem Development Company, Ltd. will allow the public to embark on a virtual tour of the Umayyad streets and buildings adjacent to the Temple Mount as they once existed during the period of the Umayyad Caliphate, the time of Jerusalem’s first Muslim rulers.

The Israel Antiquities Authority and the East Jerusalem Development Company, unveiled a computerized three dimensional model that will allow visitors to go back in time and walk among the streets and buildings next to the Temple Mount, as they appeared in the eighth century CE, during the rule of the Umayyad caliphs –the first Muslim rulers of Jerusalem.

The model opened to the public visiting the Davidson Exhibition and Virtual Reconstruction Center, located in the Jerusalem Archaeological Garden –a center which is built inside the remains of one of the Umayyad buildings adjacent to the Temple Mount.

The model, notes Gideon Shamir, director-general of the East Jerusalem Development Company, constitutes a technological and conceptual breakthrough on a world class scale in the way of presenting and exhibiting archaeological sites.

According to Gideon Shamir the model makes it possible to tour the ruins in real time as they were during the Umayyad period.

The interactive model presents the magnificence and intensity of the construction of the Umayyad buildings and shows how the Temple Mount compound was renovated some 630 years after its destruction by the Romans.

The model was constructed by Yuval Baruch, on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Dr. Lisa M. Snyder, of the Department of Urban Architecture of the University of California at Los Angeles.