2,000-year-old Pilgrimage Road to Temple Mount opens to public after years of digging

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/2000-year-old-pilgrimage-road-to-temple-mount-opens-to-public-after-years-of-digging/

The Pilgrimage Road, under excavation for some 20 years by archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority, is believed to have been built in the first years of the common era by either King Herod or Governor Pontius Pilate as the leading artery through which visitors ascended to the Temple from the south.

“This is one of the most magnificent archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem in the last decades,” Amit Re’em, IAA chief archaeologist for the Jerusalem District, told The Times of Israel via telephone ahead of the tour. “For the first time, you can see this direct link between the Siloam Pool and the Temple Mount, and the street was sealed under the modern city for thousands of years.”

The excavation itself was opposed by many Palestinian residents living in the houses above the underground site, as they charged that it would damage the buildings, an accusation firmly rejected by the archaeologists, the City of David and ELAD.

Jewish and historical sources describe how, toward the end of the Second Temple Period, millions of pilgrims would flock to Jerusalem for the annual festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, as the city and the Temple reached the apex of their splendor after Herod renovated and expanded them.