The Western Wall
Two thousand years of prayer at the Kotel, in Jerusalem's Old City on a live webcam.
About this view
The Western Wall, the Kotel, is a surviving stretch of the great retaining wall Herod built around the Second Temple compound, destroyed in 70 CE, and Judaism's most sacred place of prayer. This view watches the plaza where worshippers have tucked written prayers between its stones for centuries.
The plaza's pulse follows the Jewish calendar: quiet weekday mornings with bar mitzvah processions and their drummers; the crescendo before Shabbat on Friday as the sun sets (all times Israel, UTC+2/+3); festival nights when the space fills wall to wall.
On a live webcam that runs day and night, look for the swifts that nest in the upper courses each spring, wheeling over the plaza at dusk. Regulars of this feed know them as the Wall's other congregation.
