Jerusalem

No other city carries the weight Jerusalem does. David took it from the Jebusites and made it his capital; Solomon built the Temple on its northern ridge; prophets warned it, exiles wept for it, and pilgrims climbed to it three times a year singing the Songs of Ascents.

For Christians the city is where the Gospels end and the Church begins. Jesus taught in the Temple courts, ate a last meal in an upper room, was condemned near the Antonia fortress, crucified outside the wall and raised in a garden tomb. Fifty days later the first congregation was formed a few streets away.

Today the Old City is a square kilometre of layered devotion: the Western Wall, the Holy Sepulchre, the Haram al-Sharif, Armenian and Syriac chapels, Ethiopian monks on a rooftop. It is crowded, contested and unmistakably alive.