Jerusalem’s Stepped Pilgrimage Street
A broad stepped avenue climbed roughly six hundred meters through Jerusalem’s Tyropoeon Valley from the Siloam area toward the Temple Mount, with coins beneath its paving placing completion in the time of Pontius Pilate.
- Artifact date
- Early first century AD
- Findspot
- Tyropoeon Valley, Jerusalem
- Current location
- City of David
What archaeologists can actually examine
Excavated segments reveal a monumental Early Roman street running north through the Tyropoeon Valley from the vicinity of the Pool of Siloam toward the southwestern Temple Mount. Alternating short and long steps, broad limestone paving, curbs, adjacent shops and a large drainage channel show coordinated urban planning. More than one hundred coins recovered in controlled deposits beneath paving stones provide a terminus after AD 30/31 and support completion under Pontius Pilate. Destruction deposits above the road belong to the Roman capture of Jerusalem in AD 70. The archaeology establishes a major public thoroughfare; its popular name ‘Pilgrimage Road’ describes a persuasive function rather than an ancient inscribed title.
A monumental route linked Siloam and the Temple
Roughly six hundred meters of planned ascent connected the southern pool district with Jerusalem’s Temple-side street system.
Coins refine the construction date
Issues sealed beneath paving include a coin of AD 30/31, supporting completion during Pontius Pilate’s prefecture.
The street supported more than movement
Shops, plazas, curbs, paving, and drainage reveal a coordinated commercial and civic corridor serving large crowds.
AD 70 closed the street’s first life
Destruction layers and collapsed buildings mark Jerusalem’s Roman capture, after which later occupation reused the valley.
‘Pilgrimage Road’ is interpretive
The name fits direction and context but is not an excavated ancient label or proof of exclusive sacred use.
Follow the evidence from discovery to debate
Move through the find in a deliberate order: establish its provenance, examine the surviving object, place it in time, and then weigh the scholarly interpretation.
How the find came to light
Frederick Bliss and Archibald Dickie first encountered portions of the street and Siloam area through nineteenth-century shafts and tunnels. Kathleen Kenyon exposed another segment in the 1960s, while Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron’s work from the 1990s onward clarified the connected street and drainage system. Large-scale excavations directed by Israel Antiquities Authority teams, including Nahshon Szanton and later Ari Levy, have continued to expose shops, plazas, construction fills, destruction layers, and small finds while engineers stabilize the tunnel-like excavation corridor. Because work proceeds beneath a dense modern neighborhood, the method and support system shape what can be exposed and make careful stratigraphic publication essential to evaluating public reconstructions.
What you are looking at
The feature is a paved urban avenue rather than a single object. Surviving slabs form a stepped surface whose rhythm commonly alternates narrower risers with broader treads, adapting movement to the valley’s climb. Curbstones define the route, and side spaces include shops, podiums, and a lower-city plaza associated with commerce. Beneath or alongside the street, masonry walls and heavy cover slabs enclose a major drain. Missing pavement in some areas reflects ancient destruction, later robbing, and earlier excavation. Modern steel arches, concrete supports, lighting, and visitor walkways are conservation infrastructure, not Roman fabric, and should remain visually distinct in captions and reconstructions.
Where it belongs in history
The street was conceived within Jerusalem’s late Second Temple transformation, but coin sequences sharpen the construction date beyond a generic ‘Herodian’ label. Coins sealed under paving include issues of Pontius Pilate dated AD 30/31, while later common Jerusalem coins are absent from these foundation deposits. Excavators therefore place completion in Pilate’s prefecture, after Herod the Great’s death, showing that monumental work around the Temple continued under direct Roman administration. The street remained active until AD 70, when buildings beside it collapsed and destruction debris covered portions of the paving. Later Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic occupation reused or cut the corridor, producing a layered site rather than an untouched first-century roadway.
Consensus, questions, and debate
There is strong agreement that the street was a major first-century artery and that coins beneath sealed paving place completion after AD 30/31, most plausibly during Pilate’s administration. Scholars differ more over rhetoric and function. ‘Pilgrimage Road’ is a modern interpretive name, while excavation publications usually prefer ‘Stepped Street’ or ‘monumental street.’ Its path toward the Temple and connection with Siloam support pilgrimage use, but it also served residents, merchants, officials, and ordinary urban traffic. Archaeologists have additionally debated the risks of extensive subsurface or tunnel excavation, because exposing a long corridor can separate remains from adjacent horizontal contexts. Detailed stratigraphic reports and multidisciplinary sampling are therefore crucial controls.
The biblical record beside the artifact
John 9:7–11 narrates a blind man washing at the Pool of Siloam and returning able to see. The stepped street provides first-century urban context for movement northward from that pool area, but John does not name the avenue or say the healed man followed it. More broadly, the route connected Jerusalem’s southern approach with the Temple precinct during the period when the Gospels and Acts describe crowds, festivals, commerce, and repeated journeys to the Temple. Calling it a pilgrim route is reasonable given its destination, scale, and associated purification landscape, yet archaeology cannot identify Jesus, the disciples, or any named festival crowd on its stones.
John 9:7–11
7And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.
8¶ The neighbours therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged?
9Some said, This is he: others [said], He is like him: [but] he said, I am [he].
10Therefore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened?
11He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight.
A responsible historical conclusion
The street turns Jerusalem’s festival geography into measurable infrastructure. Pilgrimage required more than devotion: crowds needed water, graded access, drainage, food, currency exchange, and commercial space. Paving and shops show civic investment in that movement, while the coins demonstrate that construction continued into the governorship known from the Passion narratives. This does not turn the road into a relic of one biblical footstep. Its deeper value is historical scale. The avenue reveals how Roman rule, Jewish pilgrimage, Temple-centered economy, and local engineering occupied the same landscape shortly before AD 70, giving readers a responsible setting for John and Acts without manufacturing a personal identification.
Authoritative sources
Institutional catalogs, excavation reports, and academic publications let you examine the evidence beyond this summary.
Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem: The Monumental Street from the Siloam Pool to the Temple Mount
Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv UniversityPeer-reviewed publication of the street’s construction fills, coin chronology, dimensions, workmanship, and attribution to Pilate’s prefecture.
Jerusalem, City of David, the Stepped Street
Israel Antiquities Authority, Hadashot Arkheologiyot 134Official excavation report documenting stratigraphy from the drainage channel through paving and the AD 70 destruction layer.
Jerusalem, City of David, the Stepped Street
Israel Antiquities Authority, Hadashot Arkheologiyot 135Official follow-up report defining the Early Roman construction and destruction phases and later reuse along the excavated avenue.
The Reich–Shukron Excavations in the City of David (1995–2010)
Ancient Jerusalem Publications / City of DavidExcavators’ synthesis of the paved stepped street, Siloam context, and major drainage system uncovered during the long campaign.