The cave of Zedekiah, which is still called quarries of king Solomon – an underground space beneath the Old city, formed in ancient times because of extraction there limestone.

This is the largest quarry of Jerusalem extends under the land to the East of the Damascus gate for about two hundred meters in length and one hundred in width. The noise upstairs Muslim quarter, and it's hard to imagine that at ten meters depth is a huge underground ceremonial hall, preserves the traces of millennia of hard work.

The whole cave, except the entrance, is an artificial object, gradually created by human hands. It is known that under Herod the Great (40-4 BCE) this was the main quarry of Jerusalem. Hence, there was a stone for the reconstruction of the Temple and construction of a retaining wall of the Temple mount – their remains are known today as the Wailing Wall. It is believed, however, that the development career began long before Herod. The legend says that, ten centuries before, when the old Testament king Solomon, here made of stone blocks for the first Temple. No archaeological evidence no, but persistent tradition gave the cave a second name associated with the name of the wise king.

The name of the object goes back to another legend relating to the events of the VI century BC Judean king Zedekiah tried to escape through the cave from Jerusalem, besieged by the troops of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. Water droplets crashing down from the ceiling of the cave, also known as "tears of Zedekiah".

In the Byzantine and Islamic periods here, too, was extracted building limestone. It was convenient: closed quarry worked in any weather. On the rocks you can see Arabic, Greek, Armenian graffiti and traces of the tools of stone masons, the terms are almost ready abandoned blocks. French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Hanover found in a narrow niche is not too artistic carving depicting a winged cherub.

When the work in the cave stopped, she was forgotten for three hundred years. Again it was discovered in 1854, an American missionary James Turner Barclay. His dog, chasing a Fox, was rummaging in the dirt near the city wall and suddenly disappeared in the opened hole. Night Barclay with his two sons, dressed as Arabs entered the cave, where they found a human skeleton and a huge number of bats.

A few years later the cave was discovered for themselves the Freemasons, who have since conducted their ceremony. The widest part of the cave is called "Hall masons". Today the cave of Zedekiah – a place of pilgrimage for Freemasons around the world.

At the end of the last century in the cave were arranged tracks for tourists, installed fixtures. From the entrance down stairs to the main hall, where lit galleries lead into numerous branches and crannies carved into the rock over the centuries. A distinctive feature of the underground Museum of the coolness that prevails here in the hot Jerusalem day.