Mahane Yehuda and Nachlaot: The Shuk by Day and by Night

مقاطع

1. Into the shuk 0.3 km خريطة

   Mahane Yehuda light rail stop ← Mahane Yehuda Street

   City streets

   The market grew up in the late Ottoman period as an informal cluster of stalls and was formalised under the British Mandate. Enter from Jaffa Road and take the open-air Mahane Yehuda street first: produce stacked shoulder-high, vendors calling prices over each other, and the narrow gap down the middle that everyone somehow fits through. Give it 45 minutes without a plan.

2. Eitz Chaim and the Iraqi market 0.4 km خريطة

   Mahane Yehuda Street ← Eitz Chaim Street

   Covered market lanes

   Cut across to the covered lane, Eitz Chaim, and then into the side alleys. The section west of the main market was built in 1931 by about 20 traders who had been working from temporary wooden stalls; it came to be known as the Iraqi Market after the Iraqi Jewish traders who took shops there. This is where the spice merchants, the halva slabs and the old bakeries are. About 45 minutes.

3. Nachlaot's courtyards and synagogues 1.2 km خريطة

   Eitz Chaim Street ← Ohel Moshe

   Narrow lanes and steps

   Cross the road and the volume drops away. Nachlaot is a cluster of 32 neighbourhoods that grew up around the market from the 1870s onward, when Jerusalem's Jews first built outside the Old City walls. The plan is a courtyard one: houses turned inward around shared yards, reached through gates and alleys barely wide enough for two. It holds a large number of small synagogues, many founded by a single community — Aleppan, Iraqi, Persian, Yemenite — and still in use. Ohel Moshe, laid out in 1882, is the best-preserved of the courtyards. About 60 minutes wandering.

4. Jaffa Road 1 km خريطة

   Ohel Moshe ← Jaffa Road

   Pedestrian street

   One of Jerusalem's oldest and longest streets, running east to west from the Old City walls out toward the Tel Aviv highway. The central stretch is now a pedestrian and light rail corridor — the tram slides through at walking pace with no barrier between it and the crowd. Walk a section for the transition: from the courtyards, out onto the city's main commercial artery, and back toward the market as the light goes. About 30 minutes.

5. The painted shutters and the bar scene 0.6 km خريطة

   Jaffa Road ← Eitz Chaim Street

   Covered market lanes

   Come back after the stalls close and the market is a gallery. From January 2015 the British-Israeli street artist Solomon Souza began spray-painting portraits onto the shop shutters at night — biblical figures, rabbis, writers, Israeli cultural figures. By July 2016 he had painted more than 250 of the market's roughly 360 shutters. The same alleys now hold over 20 bars and at least 10 restaurants, most of them in units that sold vegetables eight hours earlier. The turnover from market to bar happens in the space of about an hour, and watching it is the point. Stay as long as you like.