‘The most terrible camp’: After 80 years, cruelty of SS site on UK soil revealed

INTERVIEW INMATES WERE MOSTLY EAST EUROPEANS, WITH MANY FRENCH JEWS

Archaeologists publish in-depth survey highlighting the historical importance of the oft-overlooked Lager Sylt, as well as the physical and psychological torture of its inmates

By ROBERT PHILPOT 11 July 2020, 10:42 am7

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  Photo of Sylt Concentration Camp on the island of Alderney, after Nazi surrender, May 1945. (Courtesy of the Trustees of the Royal Air Force Museum/ via Antiquity Publications)
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  The old gate posts to Lager Sylt on the island of Alderney, 2012. (CC BY-SA 2.0/ John Rostron)
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  The tunnel which connected the Sylt concentration camp commandant's house to the camp proper. (Centre of Archaeology, Staffordshire University/ via Antiquity Publications)
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  Stable block at the Sylt concentration camp on the island of Alderney. (Centre of Archaeology, Staffordshire University/ via Antiquity Publications)
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  Bunker on Alderney, likely built by slave labor from Sylt and the other camps. (Andree Stephan/ CC BY 3.0/ via Antiquity Publications)
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  The prisoner toilet block at the Sylt concentration camp on the island of Alderney. (Centre of Archaeology, Staffordshire University/ via Antiquity Publications)

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LONDON — British archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls compares her work on the sites of Nazi atrocities to a police inquiry.

“This is an investigation into historic crime, but crime that still has relevance for people today,” explains the Staffordshire University professor. “You wouldn’t conduct a police investigation only looking at witness testimony.”

For Sturdy Colls, who has worked on Holocaust and genocide sites throughout Europe, including Treblinka, it is the bringing together of physical evidence and witness testimony which offers the opportunity to find “new evidence and new perspectives on the nature of these crimes.”

Alderney is in one of the small clusters of islands — an archipelago which includes Jersey, Guernsey, and Sark — which lie in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy. Semi-independent, they were nonetheless the only part of the British isles to be occupied by Germany during World War II.Alongside a team from the university’s Center of Archaeology, Sturdy Colls has just completed a decade-long investigation into one of the least-studied scenes of Nazi barbarism: Lager Sylt, a slave labor and concentration camp on the island of Alderney.

Illustrative: Caroline Sturdy Colls, a renowned forensic archaeologist, in the 2019 documentary, ‘Adolf Island.’ (Snap TV via JTA)

The result of the Staffordshire University team’s research is published in April’s edition of the academic journal Antiquity. It brings together declassified aerial photographs, archival accounts, and a range of other non-invasive techniques — such as ground-penetrating radar, and light detection and ranging surveys (LiDAR) — to produce the first investigation of Sylt since a British government inspection in 1945. It is also the first to use archaeological methods.

‘The most terrible camp’

Sylt is near-unique. It is one of only two concentration camps to have been sited on British soil. The other — Lager Norderney (not to be confused with the island of Norderney off Germany’s northern coast) — was one of four forced labor camps constructed on Alderney after the island was occupied in June 1940.

Built in 1942, Sylt was originally one of the smaller camps. But a year later, Sylt, together with Norderney, was taken over by the SS Death’s Head Unit. It became a satellite of Neuengamme, expanded rapidly in size, and was turned into a concentration camp. Sylt swiftly earned a well-deserved reputation as “the most terrible camp,” as a former Alderney prisoner later testified.

The French prisoners dubbed Alderney “le rocher maudit” — the accursed rock

Its inmates were mostly East Europeans, although there was also a large contingent of French Jews. The French prisoners dubbed Alderney “le rocher maudit” — the accursed rock — underlining the brutality of the wind-swept, sea-beaten and remote island. Its prewar civilian population of 1,400 people had been evacuated by Britain when, deeming them too difficult to defend, it pulled out of the Channel Islands after the fall of France in June 1940.

For Hitler, these solitary prized British possessions were — as Nazi propaganda would have it — the “last stepping stone before the conquest of mainland Britain.” But Alderney also had an important strategic value. As part of the “Atlantic Wall” fortifications, it was intended to protect the sea channels around Cherbourg, provide the Luftwaffe with anti-aircraft cover, and deny the Allies a potentially useful staging post for the opening of the feared Western Front.

From early 1942, Alderney thus became the scene of massive construction — of tunnels and bunkers, gun emplacements and artillery batteries, roads and a railway line — which would leave it the most fortified of the Channel Islands. Sylt’s slave laborers, together with those of Alderney’s other camps, were put to work on this massive construction effort.

It was the number of sites connected to the occupation on the small island — which is a mere three miles long and half a mile wide — which, in part, sparked Sturdy Colls’s interest.

Plans showing: A) the function of each structure; and B) remnants recorded during archaeological
investigations. (Centre of Archaeology, Staffordshire University/ via Antiquity Publications)

“There are publications about this and there have been a lot of testimonies since the war but a lot of them don’t cover the forced and slave labor perspective and, apart from investigations in the immediate aftermath of the war, nobody has focused on the physical traces of these sites,” she tells The Times of Israel.

At Sylt her team used a series of non-invasive techniques which she has developed and deployed at other sites in Europe, particularly those connected to the Holocaust.

“What this means, in a broad sense, is that we can investigate the landscape — everything from the entire landscape at a macro level of Alderney down to very minute in-field objects and items — without disturbing the ground in any way,” she says.

“The crucial thing,” Sturdy Colls says, “is really using those techniques in combination and then bringing all of that data together with aerial photographs, witness testimony, maps, [and] plans, and essentially layering them to be able to try and determine what some of these surface and buried features might be.”

A taboo subject

But the work has taken place against a complex backdrop. In a bid to disguise their crimes, the SS demolished much of the camp in 1944. That effort, combined with the fact that, for many years, the presence of concentration camps on British soil was something of a taboo subject, meant that Sylt was often dismissed as having been “destroyed” or “dismantled.”

When the island’s parliament, the States of Alderney, debated whether to include Sylt in its register of historic buildings and monuments in 2015, for instance, one committee member suggested: “If there were buildings or something there worth conserving, I might have a different opinion; but there is nothing, apart from a broken old wash trough […] and a load of brambles.”

Photo of Sylt Concentration Camp on the island of Alderney, after Nazi surrender, May 1945. (Courtesy of the
Trustees of the Royal Air Force Museum/ via Antiquity Publications)

One of the study’s most important findings, the Antiquity paper notes, was to demonstrate that “considerable traces of the camp survive, both above and below ground,” thus “challenging the notion that there is nothing ‘worth’ conserving.”

That view is endorsed by Gillian Carr, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge who specializes in the occupation of the Channel Island.

“In my opinion, the paper will be useful in helping the island of Alderney to see the extent of traces of Lager Sylt left in the landscape and therefore to think again about how the camp might be used in the island’s heritage strategy in the future,” says Carr, who is also the Channel Islands’ International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) representative.

She is currently leading an IHRA project which aims to create a set of guidelines to protect Holocaust sites.

In 2017, Sylt was designated a conservation site by Alderney, although, the Antiquity paper claims, its “physical condition remains unchanged in 2019.”

The debate about the condition of the site and the continuing desire on the part of some islanders not to dwell too closely on the horrors perpetrated there are closely interlinked, believes Sturdy Colls.

The old gate posts to Lager Sylt on the island of Alderney, 2012. (CC BY-SA 2.0/ John Rostron)

“That has been fairly central to some of the arguments around the importance of the site,” she says. “It’s made it in some ways easier for people to ignore the history of what happened at Sylt because if you can’t see the site and if there’s nothing there to see, obviously that makes it easier to ignore its history.”

There is, the archaeologist says, “a long legacy” which goes back to immediately after the war when the British government was “not necessarily keen to even acknowledge that these camps existed on British soil.” That legacy also meant that a lot of archive material remained classified for many years.

As more and more evidence comes to light it becomes more painful

Sturdy Colls accepts that the subject is a difficult one for many islanders. “As more and more evidence comes to light it becomes more painful for some people to keep having this period of history dug up over and over again metaphorically,” she says.

She also recognizes there has been an effort on the part of some journalists and writers to “sensationalize the history of what happened on Alderney.”

“Part of the reason I started the project in the first place was because I wanted to go back and review all of the archival materials and then look at the physical evidence to try and cut through some of the myth and conjecture that had built up,” the archaeologist says.

Bunker on Alderney, likely built by slave labor from Sylt and the other camps. (Andree Stephan/ CC BY 3.0/ via Antiquity Publications)

Sturdy Colls is careful not to suggest her team’s latest research is full of revelations. “I’m not saying that everything in the paper has never been written anywhere before,” she says. “Clearly, a lot of people gave testimony about this, but I really hope that the archaeology validates those testimonies in many ways and it also fills in some of the gaps, because there are some things that people didn’t say in the testimonies either because they were never asked or they didn’t think it was important.”

In all, the archaeological team recorded 32 surface features at Sylt, including four boundaries, five structures within the SS sections, two in the camp commandant’s section, and 21 in the prisoners’ sections.

“Notable structures hidden under vegetation in the prisoner area include the toilet block and bathhouse, stables, and a kitchen with an accompanying subterranean cellar,” the paper says. “Remains of the SS canteen, workshops and guardroom were revealed in the SS area. Sentry posts, gateposts and the remnants of the camp fences also survive. The lidar and geophysical survey data reveal extensive evidence surviving beneath the ground’s surface, including the foundations of prisoner and SS barracks, the sickbay and construction office.”

Using aerial photography and geophysical data, the research also tracks how Sylt evolved in a short period from a small forced labor prison into a much larger concentration camp. That development is illustrated in the research by 3D reconstructions.

Drone shot of the remains of Sylt; Inset: memorial plaque at the site. (Centre of Archaeology; Staffordshire University; FlyThru/ Courtesy Antiquity Publications)

The human story

But it is the prisoners’ story — one of “hard labor, poor rations and harsh punishments,” as the paper puts it — that Sturdy Colls wanted to lay at the heart of the research.

“I was really trying to convey the human story,” she says. “A lot of my work, particularly as an archaeologist, has to be very scientific, but what I was trying to do with this really — and I try and do with all the work that I do in relationship to the Holocaust and genocide — is to show that we’re not just talking about bricks and mortar, we’re not just talking about numbers here. We’re talking about real people, and the way that those buildings were constructed, it made such a difference to people’s lives.”

That desire to weave together the relationship between the architecture of Sylt, the unforgiving landscape, and the terrible experience of the inmates is evident throughout the research.

It records, for instance, the manner in which, while the number of prisoner barracks doubled during this time, the camp population quintupled from 100-200 to over 1,000 inmates. Today, the wooden barracks are long gone, but traces survive as shallow depressions, with buried concrete foundations and stairs leading down from ground level.

The prisoner kitchen cellar at the Sylt concentration camp on the island of Alderney. (Centre of Archaeology, Staffordshire University/ via Antiquity Publications)

Mapping out the barracks — which were exposed to the coast’s windy weather — graphically corroborates witness testimony of acute overcrowding. Each barrack, which housed roughly 150 men, allowed for less than 1.5 square meters (4 feet by 4 feet) for each person.

The size of the foundation of the prisoners’ kitchen — less than 20 meters by 6.03 meters (65 feet by 20 feet) — tells a story which, again, confirms later accounts of pitiful rations and lack of food. As Sturdy Colls says: “Obviously, they never really intended to feed them properly, otherwise they would have built a bigger kitchen.” The toilet block, which was uncovered in 2013, was also undersized and basic, as was the simple wooden building which housed the sickbay.

The archaeological survey draws out the contrast between the prisoners’ facilities and the comfort enjoyed by their SS guards. Many SS structures, for instance, were constructed from reinforced concrete. To protect them from the island’s harsh weather, and possible air raids, SS buildings were surrounded by stone walling and had foundations dug below ground level. The SS also put their horses in stables — whose foundations and a concrete trough survive in good condition — which were better constructed than the prisoner buildings.

Stable block at the Sylt concentration camp on the island of Alderney. (Centre of Archaeology, Staffordshire University/ via Antiquity Publications)

The archaeologists also investigated a tunnel which traveled from inside a prisoner bathhouse to just behind the commandant’s Tyrolean-style villa outside the camp walls. Electric lighting in the tunnel, whose existence has long been documented, indicates that it was well-used, but its purpose remains a mystery. Speculation has ranged from suggestions that it was a bomb shelter to the idea it was a space through which women could be taken into a brothel within the villa.

There is, says Sturdy Colls, a “weird contrast” between the the fact that the camp was so heavily guarded and this apparent weak spot where there is seemingly access between the commandant’s house and the prisoner area at the camp.

The researchers also explored the “heightened security measures” which were constructed — including barbed wire fences and watchtowers — as Sylt was transformed into a concentration camp.

The tunnel which connected the Sylt concentration camp commandant’s house to the camp proper. (Centre of Archaeology, Staffordshire University/ via Antiquity Publications)

“The nature of the security of this camp was incredibly strong in terms of the number of guards, but also in terms of the way that the camp was built given that there was nowhere to go when the prisoners escaped,” says Sturdy Colls.

Indeed, the fact that any escaped prisoner would encounter minefields, steep cliff edges and the sea makes clear that the security was, in part, intended to exact a psychological toll on those incarcerated behind it.

The nature of the security of this camp was incredibly strong given that there was nowhere to go when the prisoners escaped

As the archaeologist says: “The architecture of the camp and the number of guards was a way of making very clear to those prisoners that the SS was in control of every moment of their daily lives.”

The SS also used the security fences to taunt the prisoners — encouraging them to attempt to escape through them, and then shooting them when they did — and to inflict brutal punishments upon them.

Illustrative: Archeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls oversees excavations conducted at the mass graves area of Treblinka, the former Nazi death camp in eastern Poland. (Courtesy)

“I hope one of the key things about the article is that it shows that these weren’t just fence lines, these weren’t just buildings and wood and bricks and mortar,” says Sturdy Colls. “These were places where obviously the prisoners really did experience terrible atrocities, and a lot of that was connected to the way in which the camp was built and the way in which they were guarded within the camp.”

The scale of the horror perpetrated on Alderney is hotly debated. Official accounts after the war figured that less than 400 of the slave laborers died on the island. Seventy years on, though, some historians and military experts suggest the workforce and the death toll have been grossly underestimated.

Colonel Richard Kemp, Britain’s former commander in Afghanistan who has carried out detailed research into the Nazis’ reign of terror on the island, has, for instance, suggested the number of slave laborers who perished on Alderney is at least 40,000.

Illustrative; German WWII bunker ‘The Odeon’ in Alderney. The bunker is about three to four stories high and has an anti-aircraft emplacement at the back. Alderney is said to have been the most heavily fortified of the Channel Islands. (CC-SA-Tim Brighton)

Sturdy Colls says that coming to an official figure for the death-toll on Alderney is “very difficult.” She believes at least 700 slave laborers died, while labeling the figure a “very conservative estimate.” However, she continues, there is “no evidence that I’ve found in 10 years of archive research to suggest that numbers in the tens of thousands of deaths are in any way credible whatsoever. There is no evidence to suggest that that many people were even sent to Alderney.”

Her next project is a book on Alderney in which she is attempting to trace the stories of those who lived — and died — under the occupation.

“I think it’s very important to not only investigate that physical evidence and the source material,” Sturdy Colls says, “but to make sure in doing so we’re able to say something about those individuals to remind people that this isn’t something that just happened to collective groups of people.”

“Every one of those victims,” she says, “had their own stories to tell.”

Comments:

Inka Dupont

My parents, my relatives, and most of the friends they had, all where P.O.W. in Japanese concentration camps in Indonesia. That was also not very well known to people but it happened. This story reminds me of that.
I think it's appalling what people can do to other people. And history doesn't record it.

Roger Eden

There is no European country that did not have willing and enthusiastic participants in the Holocaust. They weren't Nazis, many were anti-German. Even UK citizens. On Jersey, prior to the arrival of the invading Nazis, the British Governor, sent British Policemen to round up the few Jews, writing an obsequious letter (still on the archives) that "he had the honor to inform the incoming General that he has collected the Jews...). They were murdered. He thought he was currying Nazi favors. Didn't help. The Governor was knighted at the end of the War.

Chandramouli Donti

The British and other Europeans invaded so many countries all over the world and destroyed the local cultures, economy and looted them. In no way they are better than German devils. All are same. Shame on humanity.

Miche Norman

Not true - the British had concentration camps all over the UK in the first and second world wars - some of them run on lines very similar to those that Dachau was run under complete with kapos.

Exploring Aelia Capitolina, Hadrian’s Jerusalem

Exploring Aelia Capitolina, Hadrian’s Jerusalem

November 5, 2014

Exploring Aelia Capitolina, Hadrian’s Jerusalem

followinghadrian

With thousands of archaeological sites, Jerusalem is one of the most excavated cities on the planet and to walk its streets is to walk through a thousand years of history. This ancient city has been fought over more than any other place. It has been conquered, destroyed and rebuilt many times and Hadrian played a significant role in Jerusalem’s physical development. sites, Jerusalem is one of the most excavated cities on the planet and to walk its streets is to walk through a thousand years of history. This ancient city has been fought over more than any other place. It has been conquered, destroyed and rebuilt many times and Hadrian played a significant role in Jerusalem’s physical development.

In AD 130, on his grand tour of the eastern part of the Roman Empire, Hadrian visited the devastated city of Jerusalem, accompanied by his young lover Antinous. He established a new city on the site of the old one which was left in ruins after the First Roman-Jewish War of 66–73.

The new city was to be named Colonia Aelia Capitolina.

Exploring Aelia Capitolina, Hadrian’s Jerusalem

Aelia is derived from the emperor’s family name (Aelius, from the gens Aelia), and Capitolina refers to the cult of the Capitoline Triad (Jupiter, Juno and Minerva).

Drawing of the reverse of a coin from Colonia Aelia Capitolina.
The reverse depicts Hadrian as founder ploughing with bull and cow the sulcus primigenius (aboriginal furrow) that established the colony’s pomerium (sacred boundary). The vexillum, or military standard, in the background represents the veteran status of the colony’s new inhabitants. The legend, COL[ONIA] AEL[IA] KAPIT[OLINA] COND[ITA], translates “The founding of Colonia Aelia Capitolina”.

Exactly when the construction of Colonia Aelia Capitolina began is still a matter of debate. Some scholars, relying on the writings of Cassius Dio, contend that the name change and the beginning of the construction of Aelia Capitolina occurred in connection with Hadrian’s visit in 130, perhaps even setting off the Second Jewish Revolt. Others, relying on the writings of the 4th-century church father Eusebius, propose that the change of name occurred only after the Second Jewish Revolt was suppressed in 135. However, finds from recent excavations of the Eastern Cardo suggest that not only the foundation of the Roman city predated the Second Jewish Revolt but that the establishment of the city preceded the uprising by about a decade.

The urban layout of Aelia Capitolina was that of a typical Roman town; an orthogonal plan with a square grid of streets set at right angles. It was a military colony, a traditional and official settlement of veterans of the Tenth Fretensis Legion which had been in Jerusalem since the First Jewish Revolt and probably other Roman troops.

The colony was established just north of the camp of the 10th Legion. Its major buildings were the Porta Neapolitana in the north (now the Damascus Gate), a Temple of Aphrodite, two forums and, according to Roman historian Cassio Dio, a Temple of Jupiter built on the site of the former Jewish temple, the Temple Mount.

” At Jerusalem Hadrian founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration, for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites planted there.”

– Cassius Dio, Roman History, 69.12.

© Ritmeyer Archaeological Design
Reconstruction drawing showing known monuments of Aelia Capitolina (the Eastern Cardo & Temple of Asclepius are missing)

The 7th century Christian Chronicum Paschale lists several other buildings in Aelia Capitolina; two public baths, a theatre, a nymphaeum of four porticoes (perhaps the Pool of Siloam), a triple celled building (the Capitolium?), a monumental gate of twelve entrances (a circus?), and a quadrangular esplanade. However, none of these buildings has been archaeologically located.

The Cardos

On the basis of Jerusalem’s depiction on the 6th century AD Madaba map (mosaic depicting the layout of Jerusalem, discovered in a Byzantine church in Madaba, Jordan), it is usually assumed that from the Damascus Gate in the north of the city (Porta Neapolitana) ran two wide colonnaded streets, the Western and Eastern cardos (Cardo Maximus & Lower Cardo). The Cardo Maximus is shown in the centre of the mosaic with a pillared colonnade on both sides running south to the camp. Another smaller eastern street was connecting the north gate to the south part of the city, passing between the temple mount and the upper city and reaching the Dung Gate. It is indicated by a single line of columns crossing the top side of Jerusalem.

Reproduction of the 6th century AD map of Aelia Capitolina

Paved and lined with columns, the Cardo Maximus was the main road that ran through the Roman and Byzantine city and also served as the centre for the local economy.

Artist’s reconstruction of life in a Western Cardo of Jerusalem during the Aelia Capitolina period

Major sections of this 1900-year-old street have been excavated and are reused in today’s Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. The entire roadway was originally 22 meters wide (40 feet) while the road itself was 5 meters wide (16 feet) with collonaded and covered passageways on both sides to protect pedestrians from traffic and the heat of the sun. Shops lined the colonnades in its southwestern section.

Reconstructed southern section of the Cardo Maximus of Aelia Capitolina

Reconstructed section of the Cardo Maximus of Aelia Capitolina

The excavation of the Western Cardo by Professor Nahman Avigad of the Hebrew University began in 1975 and lasted two years. A 200 m long section of the cardo was exposed 4 meters below the present street level.  Today visitors can get a good idea of how the cardo looked like just beyond the entrance to the Jewish Quarter where two sections of the main street have been reconstructed. While some of the column bases were found in situ, most of the architectural features were reused in later structures that lined the cardo.

Reconstructed southern section of the Cardo Maximus of Aelia Capitolina with the wooden roof planks

However, the Hadrianic Western Cardo did not stretch this far south until centuries later. This portion dates to the time of Emperor Justinian. During the 6th century AD, the city became an important Christian centre with a rapidly growing population. The southern section was built to link the cardo to the two main churches of Byzantine Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulcher and the Nea Church.

Artist’s reconstruction of life in a Eastern Cardo of Jerusalem during the Aelia Capitolina period

Recent archaeological excavations in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City have exposed several sections of the Eastern Cardo. Beneath the level of the Western Wall Plaza, at a depth of 5–6 meters, archaeologists discovered the remains of a wide paved and collonaded street, complete with shops on each side (much like the Western Cardo).  An Hadrianic date for the construction of the cardo was determined based on the finds discovered just beneath the paving stones. On the basis of these finds, archaeologists now suggest that the Roman city was planned and its main thoroughfares paved in the early years of Hadrian’s reign, about a decade before his visit to the East. (Source)

Excavation site in the Western Wall plaza where the remains of the Eastern Cardo was discovered
“Cotell2” by Zivya – Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons –

The Northern Gate, Porta Neapolitana

Underneath the Damascus Gate (built in the 16th century AD under the rule of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent), remains of a gate dating to the time of Hadrian have been discovered and excavated. This gate features on the Madaba Map, which shows an open square with a column inside the gate.

Reproduction of the Madaba Map showing the Northern Gate of Aelia Capitolina, the broad plaza and the column supporting the statue of Hadrian

This impressive Hadrianic gateway, built with Herodian stones, consisted of a large arched passageway – situated beneath the opening of today’s Damascus Gate – flanked by two smaller, lower arches. It was protected on both sides by two guard towers. However, by the time the Madaba Map was made, the side passageways were blocked and only the central one was still in use. In front of the gate was a broad plaza, in the centre of which stood a column supporting a statue of Hadrian at its top. Only the eastern entrance of the gate with its flanking tower has survived which can be seen below the modern raised walkway entering the Damascus Gate. The Roman gate of Aelia Capitolina has been restored and opened to the public; upon descending below the bridge leading to the Ottoman Damascus Gate, one can enter once again through this early gate into the city.

The eastern arch of the Northern Gate of Aelia Capitolina beneath the Damascus Gate, built in 135 AD

One stone, just above the lintel of the arch, bears a battered Latin inscription with the city’s name under Roman rule, Aelia Capitolina. The end of the inscription reads, “.. by the decree of the decurions of Aelia Capitolina.”  The corridor beyond the surviving arch leads to the interior of the eastern gate tower. The tower has been preserved in its full height (12 meters) and only its ceiling is a later addition.

Inside the Hadrianic gate, a paved open area corresponding to the oval plaza we see on the Madaba Map is still preserved, from which the two main streets led down to two forums. A similar circular space is preserved at Gerasa (modern Jerash in Jordan), one of the Decapolis cities which, like Jerusalem, was rebuilt by Hadrian.

Paved open area preserved under the Damascus Gate

Roman soldiers’ game carved into the pavement under the Damascus Gate

The original staircase that leads to the top of the tower is preserved to its original form and leads today to the Wall Walk.

The Damascus Gate built over the remains of the Hadrianic gate

The Triumphal Arch

Built in the style of a triumphal arch, the so-called Ecce Homo Arch, located near to the eastern end of the Via Dolorosa, is the central span of what was originally a triple-arched gateway. It was similar in purpose to the Arch of Titus in Rome commemorating the AD 70 victory over the Jews.

The Ecce Homo arch, a triple-arched gateway, built by Hadrian, as an entrance to the eastern Forum of Aelia Capitolina

The central arch was flanked by two smaller arches, one of which can still be seen inside the Ecce Homo Church. The second small arch was incorporated in the 16th century into an Uzbek dervishes monastery on the other side of the Via Dolorosa street, but this was later demolished, taking the arch with it.

The so-called Ecce Homo arch, a triple-arched gateway, built by Hadrian as the entrance to the eastern Forum of Aelia Capitolina

Traditionally, the arch was said to have been part of the gate of Herod’s Antonia Fortress, which itself was alleged to be the location of Jesus’ trial by Pontius Pilate. However, since the late 1970’s, archaeologists have established that the arch was a triple-arched gateway built by Hadrian. It served as the eastern entrance of the Forum of Aelia Capitolina located to the west of the main north-south cardo.

The Ecce Homo arch, a triple-arched gateway, built by Hadrian, as an entrance to the eastern Forum of Aelia Capitolina

The Forum

Hadrian established two forums in Aelia Capitolina, one north of the Temple Mount and the other on the western side of the city. Both were large, open, paved spaces surrounded by temples and public buildings. Only the northern forum has been located with certainty. At the start of the 20th century, the French religious-archaeologist Father Louis-Hugues Vincent discovered a large expanse of ancient pavement immediately beneath the Convent of the Sisters of Zion. He declared that it was the “lithostrotos” of John’s gospel (the location of Pontius Pilate’s judgment of Jesus). Archaeology has proven conclusively that the pavement was associated with the arch and was part of the Hadrianic forum.

The flagstone pavement of Hadrian’s forum, thought to have been the “lithostrotos” of of John’s gospel

The site of the forum had previously been a large open-air pool of water called the Struthion Pool. It was built in 1st century BC next to the Antonia Fortress, a military barracks built around BC 19 by Herod the Great. The Herodian pool was laying in the path of the northern decumanus, so Hadrian added arch vaulting to enable the pavement to be placed over it. Beneath the paving is a large cuboid cistern which gathered the rainwater from guttering on the Forum buildings.

The paving of Hadrian’s forum, thought to have been the “lithostrotos” of of John’s gospel

The Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on Temple Mount

At the excavation site in the Western Wall plaza, archaeologists also uncovered two small streets that ran perpendicularly and led east from the cardo toward the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. This discovery may indicate that, during the early 2nd century AD, the Temple Mount area had something important standing in the place where the destroyed Second Temple once stood. Some scholars have proposed that there was once a temple – to Jupiter Capitolinus or some other Roman deity or combination of deities – that was built at the site of the Second Temple after Jerusalem had been transformed into a pagan city. In addition to Dio Cassius, other written sources implied that such was the case, but little archaeological evidence had ever been recovered to confirm or support this claim until the discoveries of these two small streets.

In AD 333, the “Bordeaux Pilgrim” mentioned that he saw two statues of Hadrian near the temple mount and that there was a building over the place of the Jewish Temple.

“There are two statues of Hadrian, and not far from the statues there is a perforated stone, to which the Jews come every year and anoint it, bewail themselves with groans, rend their garments, and so depart.”

– The Bordeaux Pilgrim, Itinerary 7a

However, it has been thought that the pilgrim may have mistaken the statue of Antoninus Pius with that of Hadrian. This can be revealed by an inscription which today appears upside-down on the wall above the Double Gate located on the southern Temple Mount Wall. This inscription,  reused by later Islamic builders, could have been engraved upon the pedestal of Antoninus Pius’ equestrian statue.

Upside down inscription is from the Roman statue of Emperor Antoninus Pius that the Bordeaux Pilgrim recorded seeing when he was on the Temple Mount in 333 AD

Shown right-side-up, the inscription reads:

The Antoninus Pius inscripion shown rightside-up

“To Titus Aelius Hadrianus
Antoninus Augustus Pius
The father of the fatherland, pontifex, augur
Decreed by the Decurions”

Double Gate located on the southern Temple Mount Wall

In AD 398, Saint Jerome‘s commentary on Matthew mentioned that an equestrian statue of Emperor Hadrian was still standing directly over the site of the Holy of the Holies, then consecrated to Jupiter Capitolinus.

“So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation: or to the statue of the mounted Hadrian, which stands to this very day on the site of the Holy of Holies.“

– Jerome, Commentaries on Isaiah 2.8: Matthew 24.15

Therefore it is reasonable to assume that there was an equestrian statue on the Temple Mount. These statues were probably destroyed by the Byzantine Christians after AD 333, the Jews in AD 614 or the Muslims in AD 638. This reused block (spolia) is the only part of the two statues found so far.

If a temple of Jupiter Capitolinus existed on Temple Mount, it is probable that the new sacred precinct had similar enclosures to that of the Temple of Jupiter that Hadrian built at Heliopolis (Baalbek). It is a theory put forth by the Tel Aviv architect Tuvia Sagiv, who has noted the striking similarity in both design and scale between the temple complex of Jupiter in Baalbek and the present arrangement of Islamic buildings on Temple Mount.

The standard pattern for such temples, as seen in the image above, was an entry through a propylon and an octagonal portico, a plaza with an altar, and the temple proper. Sagiv argues that when the architecture of the temple complex of Jupiter in Baalbek is overlaid on the Temple Mount, it matches the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock exactly (see the overlaid image here).

If Tuvia Sagiv is correct, then the Dome of the Rock is not the actual site of the Jewish temple. He suggests the Dome of the Rock was built upon the remains of the temple built by Hadrian (read more here).

The Temple of Asclepius & Serapis

In digs conducted in 1964 near the Church of Saint Anne, archaeologists discovered the remains of Hadrian’s Temple of Asclepius – the god of healing – and Serapis. Between 150 BC and AD 70, a popular healing centre developed on the site of the Pool of Bethesda, the water reservoirs that supplied water to the temple mount in the 3rd century AD. A water cistern, baths and grottoes were arranged for medicinal or religious purposes. In the mid 1st century AD, Herod Agrippa built a popular healing centre, the asclepeion.

Excavations at the Pool of Bethesda showing the ruins of the Temple of Serapis with a column from an early Christian church (next to St Anne’s Church)

When Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, he expanded the asclepeion into a large temple to Asclepius and Serapis. Several votive offerings were discovered at the site of the temple including a small aedicula with a snake – the symbol of Asclepius – and wheatears, a statuette representing a woman getting ready for bathing as well as a Roman coin minted in Aelia Capitolina figuring the god Serapis.

Antoninus Pius. AD 138-161. Laureate head of Antoninus Pius right / Draped bust of Serapis right, wearing modius

Marcus Aurelius, with Commodus. AD 161-180. Confronted busts of Marcus and Commodus, each laureate, draped, and cuirassed / Draped bust of Serapis right, wearing modius.

In the Byzantine era, the asclepeion was converted into a church.

Ruins of the Temple of Serapis with a column from an early Christian church (next to St Anne Church)

The Temple of Aphrodite

At the junction of the Cardo Maximus with the Decumanus of Aelia, Hadrian’s architects laid out a vast forum (which is now the location of the Muristan). A sacred precinct was built adjacent to this forum in the area now occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the purported tomb of Jesus and Calvary itself. According to Eusebius, Hadrian built a temple dedicated to the Roman goddess Venus in order to bury the cave in which Jesus had been buried.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre built over the Hadrianic Temple of Aphrodite
© Jorge Láscar

The sources give conflicting reports but it seems the honoured god of the pagan sanctuary was Hadrian’s own family deity Aphrodite, a goddess also sacred to the occupying 10th legion: the emblem on its Vexillum standard was the Taurus, the zodiacal sign for April, the time of year when the legend was founded and auspicious to Aphrodite. The Hadrianic temple was  completely destroyed by the Emperor Constantine the Great 180 years later. He ordered that the temple be replaced by a church.

The Hadrianic temple was surrounded by a temenos (a sanctified area, marked by a protective wall) with a main entrance on the Cardo Maximus. In the 1970s, in the Chapel of Saint Vartan deep beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, archaeologists discovered part of the original ground level and the protective walls of Hadrian’s temple enclosure (see image here). One of these walls has a stone etched with a merchant ship and an inscription “DOMINE IVIMVS” which translates “Lord, we went” (see image here). It is estimated that this stone dates from before the completion of the Byzantine church. It seems to indicate that the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was regarded as the authentic Golgotha even when a pagan temple stood there.

Coins minted in Aelia Capitolina

City coins were issued from the time of Hadrian to that of Valerianus (260) but are especially plentiful from the times of Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Elagabalus, and Trajan Decius. The 206 coin types depict the many gods worshipped in Aelia Capitolina: Serapis, Tyche, Dionysus, the Dioscuri, Roma, Ares, Nemesis are all to be found in addition to the Capitoline Triad.

Antoninus Pius. AD 138-161. Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / The Dioscuri standing facing, each holding spear.

Aelia was a quiet provincial city but great events such as the imperial visit of Septimius Severus in AD 201 also took place. It was commemorated by an inscription discovered near the Western Wall. On this occasion, the colony received the honorary title “Commodiana Pia Felix”, appearing for the first time on the coins of Geta.

Elagabalus coin bearing the new name of the city Aelia Capitolina Commodiana Pia Felix COL AEL CAP COM P F on the reverse with bust of Serapis wearing modius

Epigraphic evidence

Recently, on Wednesday 22nd October 2014 (the day I arrived in Jerusalem), a rare find of historical significance was unveiled and displayed to the public by the Israel Antiquities Authority: a large slab of limestone engraved with an official Latin inscription dedicated to Hadrian.

Photo of the Latin inscription set against the Rockefeller Museum, seat of the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem

The fragmented stone, roughly a meter wide, with Latin text inscribed in six lines, might have been part of a monumental arch dedicated Hadrian in 130 in honour of his imperial visit. Researchers believe this is among the most important Latin inscriptions ever discovered in Jerusalem and may shed light on the timeline of Jerusalem’s reconstruction.

Latin inscription dedicated to Hadrian found in Jerusalem, it was incorporated in secondary use around the opening of a deep cistern

Their analysis revealed that this inscription is the right half of an inscription discovered nearby in the late 19th century by the French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau. The inscription slab is currently on display in the courtyard of Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Museum.

Fragment of an imperial inscription in Latin from Aelia Capitolina dedicated to Hadrian, on display in the courtyard of Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Museum, Jerusalem

Putting the two slabs together, the complete inscription reads:

 ”To the Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, son of the deified Traianus Parthicus, grandson of the deified Nerva, high priest, invested with the tribunician power for the fourteen time, consul for the third time, father of the country [dedicated by] the Tenth Legion Fretensis (second hand) Antoniniana”

The new part of the inscription provides confirmation that the Tenth Legion was in Jerusalem during the period between the two revolts, the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70 and the Bar Kokhba revolt.

Tile fragment with a stamp of the Tenth Legion, “LG X F”, and its symbol, a wild boar and a battleship, found in Jerusalem, 1st-2nd century AD, Israel Museum

The inscription may also help researchers to understand the historical factors that led to the Bar Kokhba revolt. Did the construction of Aelia Capitolina and the building of a pagan temple on the site of the Jewish Temple Mount lead to the revolt? Or did these two events were putative measures Hadrian took against Jerusalem in the aftermath of the revolt?

During the reign of Constantine the Great, in the fourth century AD, Jerusalem became an important Christian city. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built on the site of the Temple of Aphrodite and the Basilica of Holy Zion at the south of the Western Hill. Two and a half centuries later, Justinian built the massive Nea Church and extended the Roman Cardo further south. The Temple Mount was left in ruins.

© Ritmeyer Archaeological
Reconstruction drawing of Byzantine Aelia Capitolina

Sources:

• • The Archaeology of the Holy Land: From the Destruction of Solomon’s Temple by Jodi Magness (Cambridge University Press 2012)
  • Keys to Jerusalem: Collected Essays By Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (Oxford Univ Pr 2012)
  • The Foundation of Aelia Capitolina in Light of New Excavations along the Eastern Cardo by Shlomit Wekshler-Bdolah, Israel Antiquities Authority (2014 Israel Exploration Society)
  • The location of the Temple on the Temple Mount based on the Aqueduct and rock levels at Mount Moriah in Jerusalem by Tuvia Sagiv (2008) (Read online)
  • A Rare 2,000 Year Old Commemorative Inscription Dedicated to the Emperor Hadrian was Uncovered in Jerusalem (october 2014) published by the Israel Antiquities Authority
  • The Coinage of Aelia Capitolina,Ancient Numismatic Mythology
  • Archaeological researches in Palestine during the years 1873-1874 by Charles Clermont-Ganneau Vol. 1 (Published 1896 by Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund in London) (Read online)

Here I am in front of the Latin inscription dedicated to Hadrian revealed on Wednesday 22nd October 2014