The Cardo book is a thriller intended for the lecture of students passionate about architecture, archaeology, and history that challenges and teaches. It is a provocation to confront riddles of town planning and history that lie in front of us, but one didn’t dare to “lift the glove’.
When an ancient game was discovered chiseled on one of the Cardo pavement stones, it was only the start of a whodunit. Only more archaeological diggings (11 pits on the 180-meter length of the street) brought up the solution three years later.
But why didn’t the archaeologists find any Roman remnants?
Here we direct the stage limelight on Justinianus, emperor of Byzantium, an ebullient personality and passionate builder.
The mistrust of the archaeologists in the vision of the architects dissipated, and it turned out to be a fruitful collaboration that went on for 12 years: a real odyssey of a discovery.
The book, which is richly illustrated and narrated by the leader of a team of architects that won the first prize in a national competition for the renewal of a part of the Jewish Quarter in 1971, teaches not only historical periods of the developments of Jerusalem through the ages but also touches on the architectural dilemmas of how to rebuild and integrate into part of the historical city of Jerusalem after the Six-Day War period.




