German Colony

This guide to Jerusalem's German Colony traces Emek Refaim back to 1873, when a group of German Christians called Templers, convinced the world's end was near, built their first stone farmhouse here and laid out two neat rows of houses in the style of home. It follows the quiet decades that came after, bakeries and gardens and a village tucked into the Middle East, and how the founders' grandchildren came to see the street differently by the 1930s. Look for the gothic-script verses still cut above some of the doorways.