Biblical places in the Holy Land you can visit today
From Jerusalem to Galilee, the places the Bible names that can still be seen: what is left of each one today, where it is, and the passage to read on the spot.
No opening hours here, no prices, no tour advice: nothing that goes out of date. And only place names the Bible uses — Masada, Qumran and Ein Karem are magnificent visits and are not on this list, because they are not biblical places.
- Jerusalem and around
- Bethlehem and the Judean hills
- The Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea
- Galilee and the lake
- Samaria and the central highlands
- The coast, Carmel and the plain
The areas follow the way people travel rather than the order of the canon: a trip to the Holy Land is built around two or three bases —Jerusalem, Galilee, sometimes Bethlehem— and from each you go out to whatever lies near. Within each area, what no one skips comes first.
Jerusalem and around
The city and what you can walk from it in a morning: the Mount of Olives, the valleys that gird it, and the villages just over the ridge.
Jerusalem
In the Judean hills, about 750 m above sea level and 60 km inland from the Mediterranean. The Old City covers barely a square kilometre at the south-eastern edge of the modern city.
The Old City is still enclosed by the sixteenth-century Ottoman wall, with layers beneath it reaching back to the Iron Age. You can walk the four quarters, the Western Wall — the retaining side of Herod’s temple platform — and long stretches of the ramparts. Of the Temple itself nothing stands but those supporting walls.
Mount Moriah
On the eastern flank of Jerusalem’s Old City, overlooking the Kidron valley.
The Temple platform is a fourteen-hectare enclosure held up by Herodian walls, with the seventh-century Dome of the Rock over the outcrop at its centre. At the south-western corner the stones toppled in AD 70 still lie where they fell, beside the springing of Robinson’s Arch. The identification of Genesis’ Moriah with this hill comes from 2 Chronicles 3:1, not from archaeology.
Ophel
Downhill from the Temple platform, between the southern wall of the Old City and the Silwan neighbourhood.
The spur that held Jebusite and Davidic Jerusalem has been dug since the nineteenth century: Iron Age houses, a massive stepped stone structure, and — further up, on the Ophel — Second Temple stairways and administrative buildings. Much of the route runs underground and comes out into the Kidron valley.
Gihon
On the eastern side of the City of David, above the Kidron valley.
The spring still runs on the Kidron slope, inside an excavated complex of Canaanite towers. Two channels lead off from it: Hezekiah’s tunnel, 533 m cut through the rock and waded knee-deep, and the dry Canaanite channel. The tunnel comes out at the Pool of Siloam.
Siloam
At the southern foot of the City of David, where Hezekiah’s tunnel ends, beside the Silwan neighbourhood.
In 2004 sewer works uncovered the steps of the Second Temple pool, the one John names; it is being excavated in sections and only part of it is exposed. The small pool shown to visitors before that, with its minaret beside it, is Byzantine and later.
Mount Zion
Outside the Ottoman wall, south of the Zion Gate, a few minutes’ walk from Jerusalem’s Old City.
The western hill has been called Zion since Byzantine times; the Zion of the historical books was the eastern hill, that of the City of David. The visits here are the Cenacle — a twelfth-century Gothic hall over earlier structures, held by tradition to be the room of the Last Supper and of Pentecost — the Dormition abbey, and the building Jewish tradition venerates as David’s tomb.
Golgotha
In the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, at the end of the Via Dolorosa.
The Holy Sepulchre shelters under one roof the outcrop of Calvary and the edicule enclosing what remains of a rock-cut tomb. The site was a disused quarry outside the first-century wall, with tombs around it — which makes the identification plausible without proving it. Six Christian communities share the building under the division fixed by the 1852 status quo.
Gethsemane
At the foot of the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron valley from the Lions’ Gate.
A walled garden with eight old olive trees — radiocarbon-dated to several centuries, on roots probably older still — and beside it the Church of All Nations, built in 1924 over Byzantine and Crusader remains. Inside, the bare rock before the altar is what is venerated. The exact spot of the prayer is unknown; the nearby grotto preserves a rival tradition about the same night.
Mount of Olives
East of Jerusalem’s Old City, separated from it by the Kidron valley.
An 800-metre limestone ridge covered by a Jewish cemetery of tens of thousands of graves and by Christian shrines: the octagonal Chapel of the Ascension, now a mosque, with a footprint in the rock venerated since the fourth century; the Pater Noster, with the Lord’s Prayer in more than a hundred languages; and Dominus Flevit, built over first-century tombs. From the summit the whole Temple platform is in view.
Bethphage
On the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, on the road climbing from Bethany to Jerusalem.
A small Franciscan shrine of the late nineteenth century in the village of et-Tur, over Crusader remains. It keeps a cube of stone painted in the twelfth century with scenes of the entry into Jerusalem, which tradition ties to the mounting of the donkey. The Palm Sunday procession to the Old City sets out from here.
Kidron
Between Jerusalem’s Old City and the Mount of Olives; the watercourse continues south-east to the Dead Sea.
A ravine, dry for most of the year, separating the Old City from the Mount of Olives and running down towards the desert. Along its lower stretch stand four rock-cut funerary monuments of the Second Temple period, known by traditional names — Absalom, Zechariah, the sons of Hezir — that do not match those actually buried in them.
Bethany
In the West Bank, on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, about 3 km from Jerusalem’s Old City — though the drive is now considerably longer than that.
Twenty-four steps go down to a rock-cut tomb with antechamber and burial chamber, venerated as Lazarus’ since the fourth century; three successive churches stood above it. Next to it, the Franciscan church of 1954 leaves the Byzantine and Crusader apses and floor mosaics on view.
Emmaus
West of Jerusalem: Motza some 6 km out along the Tel Aviv road, el-Qubeibeh 12 km to the north-west, and Nicopolis 30 km away, where the hills open onto the plain.
Three places claim the name, and all three have a shrine: Nicopolis (Imwas), with excavated Byzantine and Crusader basilicas; el-Qubeibeh, with a Franciscan church over a house and Crusader walls; and Motza-Qaluniya, which best fits the sixty stadia given by most manuscripts of Luke. None of the identifications is settled.
Gibeon
In the West Bank, about 10 km north-west of Jerusalem.
El-Jib preserves the great round shaft eleven metres across, with a spiral stair cut into the rock, a stepped tunnel to a spring outside the wall, and rock-cut cellars for wine jars. The pool is usually identified with the one in 2 Samuel 2.
Bethlehem and the Judean hills
The south: Bethlehem eight kilometres from Jerusalem and, beyond it, Hebron and the hill country dropping away towards the desert.
Bethlehem
In the West Bank, 10 km south of Jerusalem, on the rim of the Judean desert.
The Church of the Nativity keeps the plan and columns of Justinian’s sixth-century rebuilding over the Constantinian church, whose floor mosaic shows through trapdoors. Below, the grotto with the fourteen-pointed silver star has been venerated as the birthplace since the second century, on the testimony of Justin and Origen. The restoration completed in 2019 brought back the Crusader mosaics on the upper walls.
Hebron
In the West Bank, 35 km south of Jerusalem at 930 m, high on the mountain ridge.
Tel Rumeida, the hill of the ancient city, shows Bronze Age cyclopean walls and is dug in sections between present-day houses. The town keeps a Mamluk old quarter with a covered souk and workshops for blown glass and pottery.
Machpelah
In the centre of Hebron, in the West Bank, below the hill of the ancient city.
A rectangular enclosure of Herodian ashlar twelve metres high — the one building of Herod’s still standing almost intact. Inside are medieval cenotaphs of the patriarchs; the caves themselves lie under the floor, sealed and never excavated. Since 1994 the interior has been divided into a synagogue side and a mosque side, with separate entrances.
Beersheba
In the northern Negev, on the edge of the modern city of Beer Sheva, about 115 km south of Jerusalem.
Tel Beer Sheva has been excavated in full: an oval-planned Israelite town of the ninth and eighth centuries BC, with a three-chambered gate, houses backing onto the wall, a drainage system, and a well over forty metres deep beside the entrance. The horned altar on site is a reconstruction from reused blocks found in a storehouse; the original is in a museum.
The Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea
The rift that splits the country from north to south, far below sea level: Jericho, the river of the baptism, and the far bank with Nebo looking out over the promised land.
Engedi
On the western shore of the Dead Sea, some 55 km south-east of Jerusalem and 400 m below sea level.
An oasis with year-round waterfalls in two canyons cutting the cliff above the Dead Sea, now a nature reserve where ibex and hyrax are easily seen. On the slope stands a Chalcolithic sanctuary of the fourth millennium, and lower down the remains of a third-century synagogue with a mosaic floor and inscription.
Salt Sea
At the bottom of the Jordan rift, between the Judean desert and the mountains of Moab.
The lowest lake on earth: its surface is around 435 m below sea level and falls about a metre a year, so the shoreline retreats and sinkholes open where water used to stand. At roughly 34% salinity nothing lives in it, and a body floats without effort. The northern and southern basins are now divided by an exposed isthmus.
Jericho
In the West Bank, in the Jordan valley, 250 m below sea level and some 10 km from the river.
Tell es-Sultan stacks more than twenty levels from the Neolithic on; visible today are the round stone tower of around 8000 BC and stretches of wall from several periods. Kathleen Kenyon’s excavations found no standing wall at the end of the Late Bronze Age, which keeps the dating of the Joshua account under discussion. The spring that waters the oasis rises at the foot of the mound.
Jericho
In the West Bank, about 2 km south-west of the ancient mound, where the Wadi Qelt opens into the valley.
Tell el-Alayiq holds the winter palaces of the Hasmoneans and of Herod on both banks of the Wadi Qelt: pools, sunken gardens and a reception hall built in opus reticulatum by workmen brought from Italy. In the town an old sycamore is pointed out as Zacchaeus’ tree, on the strength of custom alone.
Bethany
In Jordan, 9 km north of the Dead Sea and about 50 km from Jerusalem; the western-bank site lies in the West Bank, directly opposite.
On the eastern bank, excavation since 1996 has uncovered Byzantine churches, baptismal pools and a pillared chapel beside the old channel, identified with John’s Bethany “beyond the Jordan”. Facing it on the western bank, Qasr al-Yahud marks the same event with steps going down into the water. The river is only a few metres wide here.
Jordan
It rises at the foot of Mount Hermon, passes through the Sea of Galilee and ends in the Dead Sea after 250 km of channel across barely 100 km in a straight line.
The river runs sunk in a strip of tamarisk and oleander — the prophets’ “pride of the Jordan” — along the floor of the rift, and reaches the Dead Sea with a fraction of its historic flow, drawn off upstream. You can reach the bank at Yardenit, where it leaves the Sea of Galilee, and at the two baptism sites far to the south.
Mount Nebo
In Jordan, 10 km north-west of Madaba, on the edge of the plateau some 800 m above the valley floor.
From the summit you look over the Jordan valley, the Dead Sea and, on a clear day, the heights of Jerusalem. The Moses memorial shelters a Byzantine church whose sixth-century mosaics survive almost entire, among them a large hunting and herding scene.
Galilee and the lake
Where most of the Gospel takes place: Nazareth, the villages along the northern shore of the lake, Mount Tabor and the plain of Jezreel.
Nazareth
In Lower Galilee, in a hollow some 350 m up, 25 km west of the Sea of Galilee and 30 km from the Mediterranean.
The Basilica of the Annunciation, built in 1969, covers a cave-dwelling venerated from early on; on a wall of the previous church a Greek graffito addressed to Mary came to light, among the earliest traces of that devotion. That it is Mary’s house is tradition, not established fact. Nearby stand St Joseph’s church, the synagogue-church in the old town, and Mary’s Well at the village’s only spring.
Cana
In Lower Galilee, north-east of Nazareth, on the road towards Tiberias.
Two places claim the name. Kafr Kanna, the one pilgrims visit, has an 1881 Franciscan church over remains of a synagogue and first-century houses. Khirbet Qana, a deserted hill some 9 km north, has an excavated first-century village and a medieval pilgrimage cave; recent scholarship leans towards it, while custom stays with the former.
Mount Tabor
On the north-eastern rim of the Jezreel valley, some 20 km west of the Sea of Galilee.
An isolated limestone dome 588 m high, crowned by Barluzzi’s Franciscan basilica of 1924, built over Byzantine and Crusader churches whose apses are left exposed in the forecourt. The Transfiguration tradition here is attested from the fourth century; the Gospels say only “a high mountain”, and Hermon has also been proposed. The road up is a series of hairpin bends.
Nain
About 10 km south-east of Nazareth, on the northern edge of the Jezreel valley.
Nein is now a small village on the northern slope of the Hill of Moreh. There is a modest Franciscan church of 1880 over Byzantine and Crusader remains; the ancient town is unexcavated. From the doorway you can see the slope the funeral procession would have come down.
Sea of Galilee
At the northern end of the Jordan valley, between Lower Galilee and the Golan Heights.
A freshwater lake roughly 21 by 12 km, 210 m below sea level, ringed by hills that funnel sudden westerly winds onto it. At Kibbutz Ginosar the so-called Jesus Boat is on display, a first-century fishing hull found in the mud in 1986 when the water dropped. Boats cross between Tiberias and the north-eastern shore.
Capernaum
On the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, about 4 km west of where the Jordan comes in.
A modern church stands suspended over Peter’s house, and the ruins are visible through the floor from inside. Beside it is the white limestone synagogue of the fourth century, built on the black basalt one of Jesus’ day, whose courses show along the base. Around them lie streets and whole blocks of basalt houses from the fishing village.
Gennesaret
Between Magdala and Tabgha, along the north-western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
The fertile plain along the north-western shore of the lake, still farmed with bananas and mangoes. At its northern end, at Tabgha, stand the Church of the Multiplication — with its Byzantine mosaic of loaves and fishes before the altar — and the Chapel of the Primacy on a rock at the water’s edge; the Mount of Beatitudes rises on the slope above.
Magdala
On the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, about 6 km north of Tiberias.
Under excavation since 2009: a harbour with a landing stage, streets, fish-salting vats, and a first-century synagogue — one of the few predating AD 70 — with a carved stone at its centre representing the Temple. A guesthouse with chapels has been built over the site.
Bethsaida
On the north-eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, where the Jordan enters it; the shoreline has receded and both sites now lie inland.
Two sites compete at the mouth of the Jordan valley: et-Tell, with a monumental Iron Age gate and first-century houses, and el-Araj, closer to the water, where since 2016 a Byzantine church has been excavated that may be the “church of the Apostles” described by an eighth-century pilgrim. The question is still open.
Tiberias
On the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, 200 m below sea level.
The southern quarter of Herod Antipas’ city is under excavation: the gate with its round towers, a colonnaded street, a theatre of some seven thousand seats, and the baths. In the modern town are the tombs of Maimonides and Rabbi Meir, a place of Jewish pilgrimage, and at Hamat Tiberias the fourth-century synagogue with its zodiac mosaic beside the hot springs.
Caesarea Philippi
At the southern foot of Mount Hermon, in the Golan Heights, some 50 km north of the Sea of Galilee.
One of the Jordan’s springs rises at the foot of a cliff, beside the grotto of Pan and the carved niches of the Hellenistic and Roman sanctuary, whose foundations are exposed. Downhill a palace of Agrippa II is being dug; the reserve also takes in a waterfall and, on the heights above, the Crusader castle of Nimrod.
Dan
At the northern end of the Hula valley, below Mount Hermon and close to the Lebanese border.
Tel Dan sits inside a wooded reserve through which another source of the Jordan runs. On view are the Middle Bronze mudbrick gate with its arch, the Israelite high place with its stepped platform, and the Israelite city gate with the king’s dais. It was here, in 1993, that the Aramaic stele naming the “house of David” was found.
Megiddo
At the pass linking the coastal plain with the Jezreel valley, about 30 km south-east of Haifa.
Twenty superimposed strata, much of it exposed: a six-chambered gate, two pillared complexes read as either stables or storehouses, a round altar of the third millennium, and a shaft with a seventy-metre water tunnel you can walk to a spring outside the wall. From the top the whole Jezreel valley is laid out.
Mount Gilboa
On the south-eastern edge of the Jezreel valley, between Beit She’an and Jenin.
A ridge of some 500 m, now a forest reserve with trails and lookouts over the Jezreel valley and, on the far side, the Jordan valley. At its foot rises the spring of Harod, where the sifting of Gideon’s men is placed. In spring the slopes carry the Gilboa iris, which grows nowhere else.
Samaria and the central highlands
The road between Jerusalem and Galilee that many cross without stopping: Shechem at the foot of Gerizim, Shiloh, Bethel and the Samaria of the kings of Israel.
Sychar
In the West Bank, in the Balata quarter at the eastern entrance to Nablus, below Mount Gerizim.
The well, over forty metres deep, still yields water, drawn by bucket from the crypt of an Orthodox church completed in 2007 on Crusader and Byzantine foundations. It is among the best-supported traditions in the Holy Land: venerated without interruption since the fourth century, and never seriously claimed by a rival site.
Shechem
In the West Bank, at the eastern edge of Nablus, a short walk from Jacob’s well.
Tell Balata shows its northern gate, stretches of Middle Bronze cyclopean wall and the foundations of the great fortress-temple usually connected with the “house of Baal-berith” of Judges 9. The site is excavated and signposted, with nothing rebuilt.
Mount Gerizim
In the West Bank, rising 880 m above Nablus; Mount Ebal stands facing it across the valley.
The summit holds the excavated Samaritan sacred precinct of the Hellenistic period and, built over it, an octagonal Byzantine church with its own wall. On the slope lives the Samaritan community of Kiryat Luza, which still keeps Passover there with the sacrifice of lambs.
Samaria
In the West Bank, 12 km north-west of Nablus, on an isolated hill above a fertile valley.
The acropolis keeps the foundations of the palace of the kings of Israel, with the pool where the washing of Ahab’s chariot is usually placed, and above them Herod’s works: a temple to Augustus, forum, theatre and a colonnaded street nearly 800 m long. In the village of Sebastia, the Crusader church turned mosque preserves the tradition of John the Baptist’s tomb.
Shiloh
In the West Bank, 30 km north of Jerusalem, beside the hill road running towards Nablus.
Khirbet Seilun preserves a Middle Bronze wall, storerooms with jars smashed in an eleventh-century BC fire, and the remains of two Byzantine basilicas with mosaic floors. Where exactly the sanctuary of the Ark stood is disputed: both the northern terrace and the summit have been proposed, with no agreement.
Bethel
In the West Bank, 17 km north of Jerusalem, on the watershed ridge at 880 m.
Little of biblical Bethel is on view: the village of Beitin sits over the site, and the excavations of the 1930s and 1950s are largely covered again. Between the houses one can still make out stretches of wall, cisterns, and the bare rock outcrop of the place — which is what gives the story of the stone its point.
The coast, Carmel and the plain
The flat strip everyone coming from abroad passed through: Caesarea Maritima, Joppa, the Carmel of Elijah and the Philistine cities to the south.
Lachish
In the Shephelah, the belt of low hills between the coastal plain and the Judean mountains, about 40 km south-west of Jerusalem.
A tell with a double wall, a six-chambered gate and the Assyrian siege ramp — the oldest surviving anywhere — with the defenders’ counter-ramp inside it. The assault you are standing on is the one carved in the reliefs from the palace at Nineveh, now in the British Museum.
Valley of Elah
In the Shephelah, about 30 km south-west of Jerusalem, on the Beit Shemesh road.
A broad farmed valley with a dry bed of rounded pebbles running through it. On the northern slope lies Khirbet Qeiyafa, an excavated walled town of the early tenth century BC commanding the pass up into the Judean hills.
Mount Carmel
Between Haifa and the Jezreel valley, running parallel to the Mediterranean coast.
A ridge some 39 km long that drops into the sea at Haifa. At its south-eastern end the Muhraqa — a Carmelite monastery with a statue of Elijah and a terrace overlooking the Jezreel valley — commemorates the contest with the prophets of Baal; at the north-western tip stands Stella Maris, above the cave called Elijah’s. Neither location is more than tradition.
Caesarea
On the Mediterranean coast, halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa.
The archaeological park brings together the restored Roman theatre, the seaside palace, the hippodrome, the aqueduct running along the beach, and the remains of Herod’s harbour, now submerged and open to divers. It was here that the inscription naming Pontius Pilate as prefect of Judea was found, the only epigraphic record of his office.
Joppa
At the southern end of Tel Aviv, on a promontory above the Mediterranean.
Old Jaffa keeps its natural harbour, still working, Ottoman lanes over the hill, and an excavated area with a Late Bronze Egyptian gateway. The Franciscan church of St Peter and the so-called house of Simon the Tanner mark their spots by tradition alone, with no archaeological support.
Tyre
In southern Lebanon, some 80 km south of Beirut and 20 km from the southern border.
Two excavated zones: the mainland site, with a 480-metre Roman hippodrome, a monumental arch and a necropolis of sarcophagi; and the former island, with baths, a palaestra and mosaic-paved streets. The isthmus joining island to shore began as the causeway Alexander threw across in 332 BC, since widened by silt.
Sidon
On the Lebanese coast, about 45 km south of Beirut.
On an islet off the harbour stands the Crusader Sea Castle, with reused Roman columns run through the walls as ties. Inland are the temple of Eshmun — a Phoenician sanctuary with thrones, water channels and an ashlar podium — and the old souk with its caravanserai.
Carry on through Tabor
Coordinates come from the open atlas at OpenBible.info. What survives at each site, and the passage to read there, are an editorial proposal by Tabor, open to correction: if you find a mistake, please say so.