Cardo

The Cardo
Arriving at "The Cardo" in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, we encounter a section of Byzantine Cardo, a Colonnade of western portico with the remains of shops hewn into bedrock. One shop was discovered intact with its arched entrance.
In Latin Cardo means "axis"; and with the Decamanus, it formed the main streets and focal axes of the typical Roman city plan. Such streets also existed in Roman Aelia Capitolina, the city of Jerusalem rebuilt by Hadrian. It was Constantine, who changed its name back to Jerusalem 200 years later.
The original Cardo in Jerusalem ran along the northern sector of the Roman City. It began from a square inside the city's main gate - today the Damascus gate - and crossed through the entire city to the south. In the middle of the square, was a high pillar; when the Moslems conquered Jerusalem in the 7th century the gate was renamed "Bab elAmud" (The Pillar Gate).
The gate, the square with the pillar, and the Cardo are depicted in detail on the colored mosaic map of Jerusalem, found in 1884 in a Byzantine church in Trans-Jordanian Medabah.

During the Byzantine era, the population increased in the city's southern sector - today's Jewish Quarter. It appears that Emperor Justinian (527 - 565 C.E.), wellknown for his construction works throughout the Byzantine Empire, built the extension of the Roman Cardo up to the southern city wall, and connected the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to the Néa Church he had built earlier.

Only a small section of Hadrian original northern Cardo has been uncovered.

The southern section, built in the Byzantine period, was only discovered when archaeological excavations were carried out between 1975 - 1978, during the restoration of the Jewish Quarter.
About 180 meters of the Byzantine Cardo has been uncovered.
The overall width of the stone-paved street is 22.5 meters, and is divided down its length by two colonnades; an open, central street 12.5 meters wide, flanked by two covered porticos for pedestrians. Along the colonnades, beneath the pavement, there were two drainage channels for draining rainwater northwards.
Fragments of the columns which had ornamented the road were scattered, and some were even integrated into later buildings. Only a few column bases were found in their original positions. The monolithic columns had capitals carved in a Byzantine variation of the Corinthian style. The overall height of the columns was 5 meters. On the west, the Cardo was delimited by an ashlar masonry wall, which also supported the roof of the western portico; the sockets for the wooden roof-beams are still visible.
On the east, the Cardo was lined with pillars topped by arches, which supported the roof of the eastern portico. The portico roofs were constructed from a series of beams covered by pottery tiles. The western row of columns has been restored. The eastern row is located beneath Jewish Quarter Street.

In the periods subsequent to Byzantine times, the Cardo continued to exist, but during the Arab period, it gradually deteriorated.
Crusaders attempted to revive the Cardo and its area of the Cardo was lined with vaulted traders' and craftmen's shops; narrow markets were formed.
Today, the covered Crusader section of the street is lined with beautiful Jewish shops. On the left side of the modern shop gallery, near the end, before the entrance to the Arab market, are excavations: these include parts of Hasmonean (Maccabee) walls and a cistern dating back to before the Roman conquests.
Glass-covered shafts in the middle of the street allow visitors to look down upon older Israelite remains that the Byzantine Cardo overlies, including a wall from the First Temple period, thus giving some idea of how the successive levels of construction and destruction of Jerusalem have changed the city's landscape.

Compiled by: Pinhas Baraq Based on:
Photos by: Pinhas Baraq

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