The Burnt House – A Unique Experience in the Heart of the Old City

Let’s take a tour of the burnt house and get to know one of the most important sites in the Old City. The Burnt House is a home from the Second Temple period that was excavated during the restoration of the Jewish Quarter after the unification of Jerusalem. The house has been preserved with fire marks still visible. A visit to the burnt house will acquaint you with a unique testimony to the fiery destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans 2,000 years ago.

Among the myriad findings revealed on the site, you can distinguish stone weights engraved with the name (D)bar Katros, a Roman iron javelin spear, and a severed arm. These and other findings made it possible to produce an exciting and experiential audio-visual presentation describing and illustrating life during the turbulent period just prior to the destruction of the Temple. It attempts to reconstruct the events that occurred in this house at the time of Jerusalem’s destruction.

 

An Extraordinary Audio-Visual Display

The audio-visual display portrays life at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple era during 67-70 C.E. Taking into account the story of the archeological findings, as well as the political and social atmosphere of the day as narrated by the scriptures, the presentation weaves a moving and memorable experience. Dilemmas that existed at the time may well be the same dilemmas we face today.

The museum invites you on a journey through time – an encounter with a Jerusalem family that lived at the time of the Second Temple and during The Great Revolt: the Katros family, whose house was discovered six meters below the Jewish Quarter. Who was the Katros family? How did the family members live their lives? What did they believe? What did they love? Why was their house burnt down and what fate did they meet? All this and more, we discover on tour at The Burnt House.

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