Jerusalem

The currency is the Israeli new shekel (₪, ILS), worth roughly R$1.60 and US$0.29 per shekel in 2026, and Israel is expensive by regional standards. An espresso costs ₪12–18, a falafel pita ₪18–25 and a plate of hummus ₪30–50; a main course at a restaurant runs ₪70–130, a beer at a bar ₪28–38 and a light rail fare about ₪6–8. A hostel costs ₪130–200 per bed and a mid-range hotel ₪500–900 per room in low season, much more on Jewish holidays. VAT is 18%, but tourists staying in hotels are exempt on the room rate and car rental when they pay in foreign currency or with an international card; bring your passport to check-in, because that's what triggers the exemption. There is no municipal tourist tax per night. Cards are accepted for practically everything on the western side, including market stalls, but carry cash for the Old City souks, for street carts and for East Jerusalem, where many shops only take cash. The tip at restaurants with table service is 10% to 12% and is almost never included in the bill; taxis don't expect a tip. In the souks and souvenir shops of the Old City, bargaining is expected; in formal stores on the western side, with price tags, pay the marked price.

Ben Gurion Airport is 50 km away, but the high-speed train shortens it

Ben Gurion International Airport (TLV) is about 50 km west, 45–60 minutes by car. The fastest option is the high-speed train to the underground Yitzhak Navon station: the ride takes about 25 minutes and costs about ₪19, with frequent departures. The station is 80 m below ground, and three elevators take you up to the surface, next to the central bus station and the light rail. The train doesn't run from late Friday afternoon until nightfall on Saturday, or on Jewish holidays, and during that window you're left with the Nesher sherut, door to door, for about ₪80–100 per person booked by phone, or a taxi, for ₪350–450. On the way back, allow 90 minutes for security procedures when leaving the country, or three hours in high season. Before flying to Israel, check whether you need the ETA-IL electronic travel authorization: since January 2025 it has been mandatory for travelers from visa-exempt countries, costs ₪25, is valid for two years and must be requested at least 72 hours in advance.

A 22.5 km light rail line that crosses the whole city

Within the city, transit combines the light rail with a dense bus network. The light rail's Red Line is 22.5 km long with 35 stops and crosses the city from Neve Yaakov, in the north, to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital, in the southwest, passing along Jaffa Street, by the market and 300 m from Damascus Gate. The Green Line has been partly running since July 2026, with the rest of the route expected in 2027. Pay with a Rav-Kav card or through the Rav Pass and Moovit apps: a city fare costs about ₪6–8 and includes transfers for 90 minutes, and there are discounted day and weekly passes. Israeli light rail and buses stop on Shabbat, but the Arab lines that leave from the bus station by Damascus Gate, serving East Jerusalem and the West Bank, run on Saturdays. There are plenty of taxis, also available through the Gett app: insist on the meter (“moné, bevakashá”) or agree on the fare beforehand. The Old City is entirely pedestrian, with steps and slippery polished stone. Cycling makes little sense on the hills, with one exception: the Railway Park has 7 km of flat bike path along the old Ottoman railroad.

Common crime is low by capital-city standards: violent assault is rare and walking at night in central areas is normal. The real risks are of another kind and change fast: political friction concentrated around religious sites, protests, checkpoints, sudden street closures, and periods of alert across the region since 2023. Before and during the trip, check your government's official advisories and install the Home Front Command app, which issues alerts by region. Avoid crowds on days of tension, especially Friday midday near the Esplanade and on overlapping religious dates, and don't film security forces or checkpoints. Always carry your passport, since there are bag checks at the entrance to stations, markets, museums, and malls, and you may be asked for ID. The check can repeat ten times in a day, and no one there finds that odd. The scams are small: “guides” who offer themselves unprompted in the Old City and charge at the end, taxis that refuse to turn on the meter, shops that double the price on the first sentence. Drones are banned. Day trips to Bethlehem, Jericho, and Ramallah are common and legal for foreigners, but Israeli rental cars generally have no insurance coverage in territory under Palestinian control. Check the contract first.

Dress for the place, not the weather

Covered shoulders and knees are a practical requirement at nearly every religious site, and men are given a paper kippah at the entrance to the Wall. In Mea Shearim and Haredi neighborhoods, short sleeves and tight clothes read as provocation; carry an extra layer in your bag.

Respect Shabbat even if you don't observe it

From Friday afternoon to Saturday night, don't photograph religious people, don't smoke near synagogues, and don't drive through Haredi neighborhoods, where some streets are physically closed. Sort out food and transport before the siren sounds.

On the Esplanade, follow the rule to the letter

Non-Muslims enter only via the Mughrabi Bridge, in short hours Sunday to Thursday, and can't carry religious objects or pray there. Arguing the rule with the guards won't change it and will create an incident; check the hours on the morning of your visit.

Mind the names

Almost every place name has two versions and each carries a political stance: Temple Mount and Haram al-Sharif, the West Bank and Judea and Samaria. Use the name your conversation partner uses and don't correct anyone.

Haggle in the souk, not in the shop

In the alleys of the Old City, the first price is an opening to start talking, and you usually settle at a third to half of it. In any shop with price tags on the western side, haggling is awkward.

Accept the coffee, and set aside time

An offer of Arabic coffee or mint tea in a shop isn't a sales trap; refusing outright is rude, accepting means fifteen minutes of conversation. If you can't stay, thank them and say you'll come back, and do.

Friday afternoon without a plan

Arriving on Friday afternoon without planning ahead. Between around 2pm and sunset, everything closes at once: supermarkets, the light rail, buses, most restaurants. Anyone landing at 4pm finds the city shut down, with no cheap taxi until Saturday night.

The Esplanade as a guaranteed stop

Counting on the Esplanade as a guaranteed stop on your itinerary. For non-Muslims, it closes on Fridays and Saturdays, on Islamic holidays and whenever there's tension, and on other days the visiting window is a few hours in the morning. Fit the visit in early, on the first weekday, and have a plan B ready, such as the Mount of Olives lookout.

Sandals or smooth soles

Wearing sandals or smooth-soled shoes. The limestone in the Old City's streets, polished by centuries of foot traffic, gets slick as soap when wet, and most of the rest of the municipality adds long staircases and 10% slopes.

Underestimating the distance to Yad Vashem and the Israel Museum

Thinking everything's close because the Old City is small. The old core fits in 0.9 km², but the city covers 125 km² of hills. Going to Yad Vashem, the Israel Museum, or Ein Kerem takes a whole morning of travel, not a quick hop.

Packing for a hot desert

Packing for a “hot desert.” At 750 m above sea level, from December to February it rains with wind and drops to 8 °C, and many old buildings lack efficient heating, so anyone who shows up in shorts gets cold inside the stone churches.

שלום (shalom)

hello, goodbye, and peace. The same word covers all three

תודה רבה (toda raba)

thank you very much

כמה זה עולה? (kama ze ole?)

how much does this cost?

שבת שלום (shabbat shalom)

greeting for the rest period, from early Friday afternoon to Saturday nightfall

مرحبا / شكراً (marhaba / shukran)

hello / thank you, in Arabic: the everyday language of the Old City and East Jerusalem

הכל בסדר (hakol beseder)

everything's fine: the default answer for almost any situation

Old City

0.9 km² divided since the 19th century into four quarters (Muslim, Christian, Armenian, and Jewish) inside Suleiman's wall. People genuinely live there: 35,000 residents, schools, workshops, and covered markets, plus the flow of pilgrims.

Downtown / Ben Yehuda and Jaffa Road

The commercial axis of the western city, with Jaffa Road closed to cars and served by the light rail. It concentrates hotels, cafés, shops, and secular nightlife, which is modest compared to Tel Aviv.

Mahane Yehuda and Nachlaot

The central market and the tangle of 19th-century alleys around it. By day it's a fruit, spice, and fish market; at night the stalls pull down steel shutters, turn into bars, and the street changes function entirely.

Rehavia and Talbieh

Neighborhoods planned in the 1920s and 1930s by German-trained architects, with gardens, Bauhaus adapted to stone, and streets named after medieval sages. It's where the president's residence and much of the academic middle class are found.

Mea Shearim and Geula

Founded in 1874, it's the world's best-known Haredi enclave, with signs at the entrance asking for modest dress and streets closed to traffic on Shabbat. Bakeries, religious bookstores, and synagogues of specific Hasidic sects occupy nearly every corner.

East Jerusalem: Salah al-Din and Sheikh Jarrah

The city's Palestinian commercial center, just north of the wall, with Salah al-Din Street as the axis of shops, offices, and the Arab bus station. Sheikh Jarrah has stone houses from the late 19th century and is a recurring flashpoint for property disputes in court.

German Colony and Baka

Streets laid out by German Templers in 1873 and high-ceilinged Arab houses occupied after 1948 make this an expensive, walkable neighborhood today, centered on Emek Refaim Street and the Railway Park, a former rail line turned into a 7 km promenade.

Ein Kerem

A stone village in a valley to the west, within the municipality but with the feel of a hamlet, with churches tied to the tradition of John the Baptist's birth, studios, and restaurants. It sits next to Hadassah Hospital, whose synagogue holds the Chagall windows.

The ridge and the watershed

Jerusalem sits on the ridgeline of the Judean Hills, between 650 and 830 m altitude, with Mount Scopus at 826 m as its high point. It's a watershed: what falls to the west drains toward the Mediterranean, 60 km away, and what falls to the east descends 30 km to the Dead Sea, 430 m below sea level, crossing the Judean Desert; hence the stark contrast between the green, Mediterranean western neighborhoods and the arid horizon seen from the Mount of Olives.

The three valleys and the two cities

Three valleys shape the old city: the Kidron to the east, the Hinnom (Gehenna) to the south and west, and the Tyropoeon, now buried, which cuts the Old City in half. The Old City covers just 0.9 km² inside 4 km of Ottoman wall and keeps the Roman grid from the 2nd century; the modern city spreads over 125 km² across ridges and gullies, which explains the constant slopes and why almost nothing is flat.

The climate and the 1918 law requiring limestone

The climate is Mediterranean at altitude, with dry summers and cool nights and rainy winters that occasionally bring snow. Since 1918 a zoning rule has required cladding in local limestone (the so-called Jerusalem stone) which gives the whole city, malls and office buildings included, the same golden sand color at dusk.

The Jerusalem Cinematheque and its film festival

The cultural output that defines Jerusalem is the kind that deals with forced coexistence, and it shows up more in debate than on big stages. The Jerusalem Cinematheque, opened in 1981 in the Hinnom Valley, has run the Jerusalem Film Festival every July since 1984, one of the few platforms where Israeli and Palestinian films share the same program. The Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, founded in 1906, is the country's oldest art institution and feeds the gallery circuit on Hanevi'im Street and at the Hansen complex, a former 19th-century leper hospital turned into an art and technology center. In music, the city is strong at two ends. One is liturgy: synagogue chant, Armenian choirs, the muezzin and Orthodox bells, all audible from the same spot at dusk. The other is a small, persistent independent scene, concentrated in bars like the ones in Mahane Yehuda after the stalls close.

Amos Oz and S. Y. Agnon wrote the city

Literature is the genre where the city most explained itself. Amos Oz grew up in the Kerem Avraham neighborhood of the 1940s and rebuilt it in “A Tale of Love and Darkness”; S. Y. Agnon, the 1966 Nobel laureate, wrote nearly his whole body of work in Talpiot, where the house is now a museum; Yehuda Amichai turned the city's topography into everyday, conversational poetry; on the Palestinian side, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and Emile Habibi wrote of loss and endurance. The National Library of Israel opened a new building by Herzog & de Meuron next to the Knesset in 2023, with a reading room open to the public and free manuscript exhibitions.

Religion organizes the week in Jerusalem

Religion sets how the week works. Muslims hold Friday midday communal prayer, when tens of thousands cross the Old City's gates; Jews observe Shabbat from Friday afternoon to Saturday nightfall, with public transport stopped and most businesses closed; Christians, split between Gregorian and Julian calendars, celebrate on Sunday and sometimes have two Easters weeks apart. Anyone who spends a full week in the city notices that the three rest days never coincide, and that a good part of the urban logistics exists to accommodate that.

“Jerusalem: The Biography,” Simon Sebag Montefiore (2011)

Tells three thousand years through the sequence of who ruled the city, dynasty by dynasty. It's the book that ties together the layers you see stacked in the same wall.

“A Tale of Love and Darkness,” Amos Oz (2002)

A childhood memoir in the Kerem Avraham neighborhood between 1939 and 1952, with the partition, the siege, and the city's division seen from the window of a tiny apartment full of books.

“Ushpizin,” dir. Gidi Dar (2004)

A comedy filmed in Mea Shearim with actors and crew from the Haredi community itself, set during Sukkot. It shows, from the inside, without mockery or devotion, the domestic logic of the city's most closed-off neighborhood.