The First Station

This guide to the First Station in Jerusalem tells the story of banker Yosef Navon, who spent three years chasing an Ottoman concession to build a railway across the desert to Jerusalem, then sold his rights in Paris to a French lighthouse inspector for a fortune before a single track was laid. It follows the French company that took over construction, spending two years and fourteen million francs to finish what he started, and the limestone terminus building itself, shaped by nineteenth-century European taste. Listen for how a ten-hour camel journey was about to change forever.