The City of David (), known locally mostly in Arabic as Wadi Hilweh (), is the name given to an archaeological site considered by most scholars to be the original settlement core of Jerusalem during the Bronze and Iron Ages. "The prevailing view among researchers that the early city, the City of David, lay in the southern part of the eastern ridge next to the spring." It is situated on southern part of the eastern ridge of ancient Jerusalem, west of the Kidron Valley and east of the Tyropoeon Valley, to the immediate south of the Temple Mount and separated from it by the so-called Ophel saddle.
The City of David is an important site of biblical archeology. Remains of a defensive network dating to the Middle Bronze Age were found around the Gihon Spring; it remained in use throughout subsequent periods. Two monumental Iron Age structures, known as the Large Stone Structure and the Stepped Stone Structure, were discovered at the site. Scholars debate if these may be identified with David or date to a later period. The site is also home to the Siloam Tunnel, which, according to a common hypothesis, was built by Hezekiah during the late 8th century BCE in preparation for an Assyrian siege. However, recent excavations at the site suggested an earlier origin in the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. Remains from the early Roman period include the Pool of Siloam and the Stepped Street, which stretched from the pool to the Temple Mount.
The excavated parts of the archeological site are today part of the Jerusalem Walls National Park.: "Contrast these rather upbeat examples of ethical praxis in public archaeology with the situation in the Wadi Hilweh neighborhood in Silwan, built on the ancient mound of Jerusalem, just south of the Haram esh-Sharif (Temple Mount). Here, the material remains of the past have become completely absorbed in the discourse of political power, as both the Israeli national project of unifying Jerusalem and the settler project of breaking Palestinian Jerusalem apart have joined to disenfranchise the people living above and among the antiquities. The archaeology practiced here is completely subsumed to political and corporate motivations that are, however, largely unacknowledged by its "neutral" practitioners, leading to questionable field practice and overtly skewed interpretations of the past. Instead of going into detail about the issues of excavation and interpretation, which I have discussed at length elsewhere (Greenberg 2008, 2009), I would like to consider if there is any way out of the predicament that is, if there is a way to conduct archaeology ethically in Silwan." The site is managed by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and operated by the Ir David Foundation. The area was referred to by multiple names in the 20th century. In 2015, Israel's Jerusalem Municipality controversially, and in a move strongly opposed by East Jerusalem residents, renamed the area around site using Hebrew names and referencing the City of David in Hebrew. Local residents consider the location to be Wadi Hilweh, an extension of the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, East Jerusalem, intertwined with an Israeli settlement.
Modern rediscovery and renaming of the site
Meaning of the site name The name "City of David" originates in the biblical narrative where Israelite king David conquers Jerusalem, then known as Jebus, from the Jebusites. David's conquest of the city is described twice in the Bible: once in the Books of Samuel and once in the Books of Chronicles; those two versions vary in certain details. In his Antiquities of the Jews, 1st-century Jewish-Roman historian Josephus repeated the story. The reliability of the Bible for the time period's history is subject to debate among scholars.
According to the Hebrew Bible, the name "City of David" was applied to Jerusalem after its conquest by David c. 1000 BCE, and is not to be confused with the modern organization by the same name and which showcases relatively small excavated portions of the larger city.; It is first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, in , in , in and in , being the name given to Jerusalem after it had been conquered by King David and who is said to have ruled in the city for 33 years.
History of the site names The area was known as Mount Ophel during the late Ottoman period. Montagu Parker claimed in a 1911 interview that his expedition had provided evidence that the "ancient City of David" was on Mount Ophel. However, the expedition ended in an international scandal and his team had to flee accusations of theft and site desecration. The first professional archaeologist to identify the site as the City of David was Raymond Weill in 1913. The British Mandatory Palestine administration referred to the archaeological site as the "City of David" on Mount Ophel by 1923 when discussing excavations. However, use of the name was not consistent at the time. On old maps, the site appears as Ophel. The last original reference to Mount Ophel in The New York Times, which used the word "ridge," was in 1981. The area was known in Hebrew as Kfar HaShiloah and in Arabic the Wadi al-Nabah neighborhood of Silwan. As of 2026, Israeli government map data lists a road to the north of the site as the Ophel, but it is not used as an area name. The neighborhood area has been renamed City of David. The area's majority Palestinian Arab residents referred to it as Wadi Hilweh after the wife of the local mukhtar who was killed in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Rannfrid Thelle wrote that the title "City of David" favors the "Jewish national agenda" and appeals to its Christian supporters.
Interest in the site
The general area has been of interest to archaeologists since the 1864 Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem and 1865 founding of the Palestine Exploration Fund. However, it was not of significant interest to visitors to Jerusalem. James Feron, the New York Times Jerusalem correspondent, wrote in 1970 that the area then consisted of low scattered homes that were ignored by tourists "overwhelmed with the beauty, color and tradition of more spectacular sites just inside the walls." He included a photo of the area taken from a camera pointed away from the archaeological site.
The situation slowly began to change. Dame Kathleen Kenyon, one of the most influential archaeologists of the 20th century, had led an investigation at the site under the control of Jordanian Department of Antiquities. She spent six years from 1961 to 1967 excavating the area and publishing her findings. The stated main object was producing a plan of Roman Jerusalem. However, a far more ancient 3,800-year-old city wall was discovered. The excavation ended up also producing plans for the "Davidic and Solomonic cities of the Iron Age" using partial evidence that was "reasonably certain."
"In American circles at least, Syro‐Palestinian [biblical] archaeology has been traditionally dependent upon churches, theological seminaries and conservative religious circles." This changed in the late 1960s as "large‐scale financial support from foundations and especially from the United States Government has brought about a transformation." By 1971, student volunteers from the United States and Western Europe were doing the work that had previously been performed by laborers. During this time, Hezekiah's Tunnel (the Siloam tunnel) began to receive several thousands of visitors a year. Mendel Kaplan donated money to turn the site into the "City of David Archeological Park," generating increased interest. In 1985, the site was still one that "requires the tourist to work ... the eye sees little more than piles of stones, not streets and houses." Professor Yigal Shiloh planned to create a massive site over a two-year period, with tourist infrastructure to show tourists structures from the Canaanite and Biblical eras. Two years later, Professor Shiloh died of cancer, leaving years of work remaining to complete his plans for the site. However, his accidental discovery of the first structure dated to around the time of David and Solomon drew widespread public interest and funding for more excavations from a new site backer. Annual visitor numbers grew from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.
Location The archaeological site is on a rocky spur south of the Temple Mount and outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, sometimes described as the southeastern ridge of ancient Jerusalem. The hill descends from the Dung Gate toward the Gihon Spring and the Pool of Siloam.
The archeological site is part of the majority Palestinian neighborhood known as Wadi Hilweh in Arabic. The area was renamed after the site from Mount Ophel in English and Hebrew, but the Arabic name remained in common use. For much of the 20th century, it was part of the village of Silwan, which was historically centered on the slopes of the southern part of the Mount of Olives, east of the City of David. Silwan spread west and crossed the valley to the eastern hill, the site of the ancient city.
Excavations and scholarly views
The prevailing view among archaeologists is that the ancient site of the City of David lay on an elongated spur facing north–south, extending beyond the wall of the Old City, south of its southeastern corner, in the southern part of the eastern ridge next to the Gihon Spring. The City of David was the ancient epicenter of Jerusalem and whose boundaries stretched from the Temple Mount in the north, thence southward to the Pool of Siloam, including the area marking the Kidron brook in the east and the adjacent dale in the west. Its area is about 50 dunams (ca. 12.3 acres).
The beginning of its settlement dates back to the Chalcolithic period and the Early Bronze Age, largely built-up around the natural spring, although not known then by the name City of David. The Old Testament claims that, after the conquest of Jerusalem, an earlier name for the site, Jebus, was replaced by the term "City of David". David's son, Solomon, extended the wall to the north and added to it the area of the Temple Mount whereon he built an edifice (Temple) to the God of his fathers. From the eighth century BCE, the city began to expand westward beyond the dale.
The debate within biblical archaeology on whether this site on the hill southeast of the Old City could be identified with what the Hebrew Bible calls Jebus and later the City of David, began in the late 19th century with the excavations of Charles Warren and Hermann Guthe. The 1909–11 work of Louis-Hugues Vincent and Montagu Brownlow Parker identified the earliest known settlement traces in the Jerusalem region, suggesting the area was an ancient core of settlement in Jerusalem dating back to the Bronze Age.
One of the stated objectives of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) since its establishment in 1865 was to search for the true location of the biblical "City of David" and to report on its findings. However, after 130 years of research, surveys, and excavations in Jerusalem, only a few of the targets relating to the area of the City of David have been achieved and neither the location of the tombs of David and Solomon or the Ophel are known.