Presented by Dr. Leonard Rothman.

This city view of Jerusalem, published in 1575 by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg, comes from volume 2 of the Civitates Orbis Terrarum (a.k.a. Cities of the World).

Compared to other Jerusalem maps in the Civitates, this one is particularly popular among collectors because it mostly mimics 16th-century Jerusalem’s physical layout.

At the same time, Jerusalem was more than a physical place.

Translated into English, this initial phrase in the Jewish Bible quotes Ezekiel 5:5: "Thus saith the Lord GOD: This is Jerusalem! I have set her in the midst of the nations, and the countries are round about her.”

(Another passage from Ezekiel 38 references animals and goods gathered from the middle of the Earth for the tribes.)

For 16th-century Christians, Jerusalem was the physical representation of the spiritual center of the world. 

(Professor Rehav Rubin calls the map “a Christian conceptualization of European pilgrims as both producers and consumers." This map shows Jerusalem as both a physical space and as the Holy City, defined by sacred history and spirituality.)

Rehav Rubin, Image and Reality: Jerusalem in Maps and Views (Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1999), 45-6.

The map shows a bird's-eye view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives in the east. Traditionally, Jesus had stood at this point and prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 19:37-44).

For 16th-century viewers, these finely dressed Turks on the Mount gave the impression of traveling to a real place and and seeing its inhabitants.

To the right of the Turks is a legend of 48 landmarks on the map. 

The cartouche to the left of the Turks states, "Jerusalem the Holy City, the most famous of Judaea and the entire East, whose size and splendor rivals the imagination."

Pilgrims to Jerusalem would have first seen the city walls, built by the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent from 1537 to 1541. 

In Ezekiel 48, God prescribes one gate in Jerusalem for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. As such, medieval artists usually depicted the Heavenly Jerusalem with up to twelve gates.

However, Süleyman's earthly walls only contained six functional gates. By tradition, the seventh, the Golden Gate (shown here) was the entrance point for the Messiah. As such, Süleyman had the gate walled up to prevent a Christian or Jewish Messiah's entrance. It remains blocked up to this day.  

Pilgrims entering Jerusalem from the east passed through Saint Stephen's Gate, also known as the Lion's Gate. 

They then traced Jesus' path on the Via Dolorosa--the Way of Suffering. Reportedly, Jesus had carried a cross along this route all the way up to the hill of Calvary.

The number 16 denotes Calvary, where the Romans had conducted crucifixions. It is generally agreed that Jesus was crucified there at a place called Golgotha, near the later location of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Pilgrims followed the Via Dolorosa up to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the traditional site of Jesus' burial and resurrection. 

The church also holds a stone traditionally believed to be the omphalos, or exact center of the world.

In Roman times, this site had hosted a temple to Venus. Constantine the Great replaced that temple with a church, which was destroyed by a Fatimid caliph in 1009, rebuilt by emperor Constantine IX in 1048, and renovated by the crusaders in 1149. 

Source: 
Robert Ousterhout, "The Temple, the Sepulchre, and the Martyrion of the Savior," Gesta 29 no. 1 (1990): 46-7. https://www.academia.edu/4462196/The_Temple_the_Sepulchre_and_the_Martyrion_of_the_Savior.

Herod the Great constructed the citadel and Tower of David to defend the western part of the city. Nearby under the number 43 is the Jaffa Gate.

These are the Western Wall and the "Temple of Solomon." The Western Wall was a retaining wall built by King Herod to support the Temple Mount. 

Atop the Temple Mount stands a building which Braun and Hogenberg call Solomon's Temple. The Temple was originally built in 976 BCE, destroyed in 586 BCE by the Babylonians (Babylon is in present-day Iraq), rebuilt in 538 BCE (permitted by the Persians, who defeated the Babylonians), and destroyed again by the Romans in 70 CE.

The building on the map is the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim shrine built in the late 7th century around the alleged site of Muhammad's Night Journey to Heaven and near the site of the destroyed Temple. 

(The Night Journey has been disputed as the motive for building the Dome of the Rock. See Oleg Grabar, "The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem," Ars Orientalis 3 (1959): 37. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4629098.)

This is the Jews' Gate, also known as the Zion Gate or the Prophet David's Gate, through which Jews entered the city. It was walled up by Saladin's nephew in the early 1200s and reopened by Süleyman the Magnificent. 

Today, this is the City of David, which has been excavated since the 20th century and is now a prominent archaeological site.

Image from the Biblical Archaeology Society.

There are many more locations that can be identified using the legend, which would require more extensive study. 

Those that can be easily located are:

• 2. House of the evil council,
• 3. The Pool of Siloam,
• 4. Hall of the Last Supper,
• 6. The road to Bethlehem,
• 7. Caiaphas's house,
• 8. Where St. Mary was nourished, 
• 9. Mary's tomb, 
• 10. Where David composed 7 psalms, 
• 11. House of Annas, 
• 12. The Kidron Brook, 
• 13. Golden Gate, 
• 17. Location of the flagellation of Jesus,
• 18. The sheep's pool,
• 19. Valley of Jehosphat,
• 24. House of Pontius Pilate,
• 25. Herod's Palace, 
• 27. House of Veronica, 
• 30. Place where Peter wept, 
• 32. Pontius Pilate's Arch,
• 36. M. of Olives-- the location is not numbered but is probably where the Turks are standing,
• 40. Site of Mary's birth,
• 42. Damascus Gate, 
• 43. Jaffa Gate,
• 48. Mosque.

Not all of the important sites are identified on the map.
 

After reviewing this map, it is important to realize that there are discrepancies in representing the landmark structures of Jerusalem. For example, Braun and Hogenberg based their representation on several other maps. This map directly resembles a 1572 map by Domenico dalle Greche, which can be traced to Camocio's simpler map of 1570, which in turn could be traced to Sebald Rieter's map of 1475. This map also contains incorrect rotations of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Solomon's Temple from a 1486 map by the German pilgrim Bernhard von Breydenbach.

Rubin, Image and Reality, 78. 

This map is part of the Leonard and Juliet Rothman Holy Land Maps Collection. The rest of the digital collection of 956 images is available for public viewing at Stanford University SearchWorks. See the link below: https://purl.stanford.edu/yv564xb3836. 

Presented and created by Dr. Leonard Rothman.

Adapted and edited by Andrew Gu, 2024 Pixeum Summer Intern.

For further study, see:

• Swift, Michael, and Angus Konstam. Cities of the Renaissance World: Maps from the Civitates Orbis Terrarum. Cartwell Books, 2008.
• Rubin, Rehav. "Jerusalem in Braun and Hogenberg Civitates." Cartographic Journal 33 no. 2 (1996): 119–29. doi:10.1179/caj.1996.33.2.119.
• Rubin, Rehav. Image and Reality: Jerusalem in Maps and Views. Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1999.

Hebrew Bible quotes come from The Holy Scriptures, according to the Masoretic Text. Chicago: The Menorah Press, 1973. The Book of Ezekiel is pages 425-467. 

Christian Bible quotes come from The Holy Bible: King James Version. Thunder Bay Press, 2000.