Yesterday, we went on a tour to see the Kotel Tunnels. The tunnels start near the kotel and go north all the way to the end of the whole western wall (not just the part where people pray). The whole western wall is 1600 feet long.
The tunnels were made when people started to build their houses in the Muslim quarter. When the Muslims built their houses, there were no tunnels, but they wanted to live higher up, so that they would be closer to the Dome of the Rock. So, they built arches over the ground (the arches became the roof of the tunnels) and they put their houses on top of the arches.
They plastered the stone walls of the tunnels and used them as water cisterns.
During most of the tour we were walking inches away from the western wall. At one point, we came across a HUGE stone. It was the biggest stone in the whole wall. 13.5 meters long, 3.5 meters tall, and 4 meters deep. And it is REALLY heavy (600 tons!!!). The size of this stone is mind blowing!
Even though all of the stones in the kotel are a lot smaller than 600 tons, they still can’t be carried by hand. When the kotel was built, the stones were moved four main ways. Either they were rolled on logs, moved on pulleys, moved by animals, or rolled in wooden cylinders with a cutout for the stone.
The tour was really informative, although it was a little too long, in my opinion.
– Naomi
Both of these photos are of the GINORMOUS stone. It is so big that even these two photos can’t show it all