HaKardo Street

This guide to HaKardo Street in Jerusalem's Old City opens with a 1970s excavation that unsettled a long-held assumption: archaeologists dug beneath the colonnaded street expecting to confirm it was built by the emperor Hadrian after crushing a Jewish revolt, and found nothing but bare bedrock. It follows archaeologist Nahman Avigad's dig starting in 1975, and the puzzle over who actually laid this seventy-foot-wide street lined with shops. Look for the columns beside you, once five meters tall, and the mosaic map on the wall copied from a sixth-century church floor found in Jordan.