Five days in Jerusalem: the weekend depends on which street you are on

Two stretches of the sixteenth century Ottoman wall are open to walk, both starting at Jaffa Gate: north past the Christian and Muslim Quarters to Lions' Gate, or south around Mount Zion to Dung Gate. The northern half is the better one, roofs and courtyards on one side and the Temple Mount rising ahead. It shuts in the late afternoon, so this is a job for the hours you have left today.

The citadel just inside Jaffa Gate is Herodian at its base, Crusader and Mamluk above, and topped by an Ottoman minaret that everyone photographs and calls the Tower of David for no good historical reason. The museum inside reopened in 2023 after a long rebuild and it is the one place that lays out four thousand years of the city in an order you can follow.

Walk out through Jaffa Gate and down the steps into Mamilla for the polished version, or carry on ten minutes into the streets off Jaffa Road for hummus, grilled meat and a great deal more noise.

The octagon with the gold roof was finished around 691 under the Umayyad caliph Abd al Malik, which makes it one of the oldest surviving Islamic buildings anywhere. The tilework on the outside was Ottoman, laid over Byzantine style mosaic in the sixteenth century. Walk the whole esplanade rather than photographing the dome and leaving.

What you stand in front of is not the Temple but the retaining wall Herod built to hold up the platform it sat on, and the enormous lower courses are his. Free, open at any hour, security screening at the entrance, separate sections for men and women. Head covering for men is provided in a basket at the entrance.

The cafes around Hurva Square do falafel, salads and iced coffee to a decent standard and are five minutes uphill from the Wall. Everything here closes early on Friday and stays shut on Saturday.

A section of the colonnaded main street of Byzantine Jerusalem, dug out below the modern Jewish Quarter and left open. The sixth century mosaic map found at Madaba in Jordan shows this street running through the middle of the city with exactly these columns along it, which is how the excavators knew where to dig.

Golgotha and the tomb are both inside this one building, up a staircase and under the rotunda respectively, and it takes a while to work out that the whole church is a shell built over a hillside. The division of the interior between Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Catholic, Coptic, Syriac and Ethiopian communities has been frozen by agreement since 1852, which is why a wooden ladder has stood untouched on a ledge above the entrance since the eighteenth century.

A Crusader church from the 1130s beside Lions' Gate, austere and almost empty, built next to the excavated Pools of Bethesda. Its acoustics are the reason to come: the stone holds a note for several seconds and pilgrim groups queue up to sing in it. Closed on Sundays.

The open square south of the Holy Sepulchre has cafes around its edges and is the one place in the Christian Quarter with room to sit. Shops here take Sunday off rather than Saturday.

The conical dome on Mount Zion, ten minutes out of Zion Gate, marks where tradition says Mary fell asleep for the last time. German Benedictines built it and it was consecrated in 1910. The crypt below, with its ring of chapels donated by different countries, is better than the church above it.

The terrace by the Seven Arches hotel at the top of the ridge is the panorama, and going before nine gets you it without the camel and the queue for the same photograph. Have the taxi drop you here and walk down from it.

At the bottom of the slope, a walled garden of very old olive trees and a dim basilica built over the rock where Jesus is said to have prayed the night before his arrest. The mosaic on the front is enormous and the interior is deliberately kept dark, with violet glass in the windows to hold the mood of the night it commemorates.

Walk up to the Muslim Quarter for hummus, msabbaha and hot bread, or buy a sesame kaak ring and a paper twist of zaatar from a barrow outside the gate and eat it on the steps.

The excavated spur below Dung Gate, and under it the tunnel cut in the eighth century BC to bring the Gihon spring inside the walls before an Assyrian siege. It runs about 533 m and still carries water, knee deep in places and pitch dark, so bring shoes you can soak and a torch. There is a dry Canaanite tunnel alongside for anyone who would rather stay out of the water.

The Shrine of the Book, the white dome you see from the road, holds the Dead Sea Scrolls including the Great Isaiah Scroll, a thousand years older than any other copy of the text. Outside it sits a model of the city as it was in AD 66, which is worth twenty minutes precisely because you have just spent four days walking the real thing. The archaeology wing is the best in the country.

Allow an hour by taxi or shared sherut, and three hours before an international departure, because Israeli airport security is thorough and starts with questions rather than a scanner.