Tower of David

This guide to the Tower of David in Jerusalem opens with King Herod ordering the execution of his own wife, Mariamne, twenty-nine years before Christ, after his sister accused her of plotting to poison him, and the grief that reportedly followed. It traces the three towers he raised over this hill, named for her and for a brother and a friend he had also lost, and the centuries of sieges and rebuilding that came after. Stand still at the base and look at the stones beneath your feet.