Plan of Jerusalem and the Temple

Few heritage objects condense as many layers of Memory as the "Plan of Jerusalem and the Temple." Under this designation lies in reality a family of highly diverse objects — mosaic pavements, illuminated parchments, woodblock prints, lithographs, and monumental scale models — all sharing the same ambition: to render visible a city and a sanctuary invested with an incomparable sacred charge. To represent Jerusalem is never merely to map it; it is to profess a spiritual geography. The biblical tradition itself provides the foundation for this conviction: the book of Ezekiel (5:5) declares "This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her," a formulation that would justify, for centuries, the central place accorded to the city on maps of the world.

This tension between topographical fidelity and theological symbolism runs through the entire History of the object. Ancient authors had already perceived it: Philo, in his Embassy to Caius, asserts that Jerusalem is "situated at the center of the world," and Flavius Josephus, in the Jewish War, writes that the city of Jerusalem "stands at its very center." The present work traces the evolution of these representations, from the oldest preserved images to contemporary scholarly reconstructions, distinguishing at each stage what belongs to archival establishment and what pertains to memorial transmission.

The oldest surviving cartographic testimony of Jerusalem is neither Jewish nor Latin, but Byzantine, and it is found today in a church in Jordan. Dating from the 6th century CE, the Madaba map contains the oldest original cartographic representation preserved of the Holy Land, and particularly of the historic city of Jerusalem. The Madaba map (or Madaba mosaic map) is part of a mosaic pavement located in a church from the early Byzantine period.

Its rediscovery was a matter of archaeological chance. Discovered in a remote Ottoman town in 1884, the Madaba map is both a masterpiece of Byzantine design and a functional map of Jerusalem and the Near East from the 6th century. The image of the city is treated as a bird's-eye view: one can recognize the city walls, the gates, the great colonnaded thoroughfare (the cardo maximus), and the principal Christian buildings, foremost among them the Holy Sepulchre. The map does not aim to locate the Jewish Temple — destroyed for more than four centuries — but to signal Christian Jerusalem, a city of pilgrimage and evangelical Memory. It thus inaugurates a constant feature of the object: the plan of Jerusalem is always oriented by the religious expectations of those who commission it.

In the Latin Middle Ages, the representation of Jerusalem ceased to be topographical and became cosmological. The great mappae mundi placed the city at the geometric heart of the inhabited world. According to the book of Ezekiel, God created Jerusalem and proclaimed it the center of all nations; on the Hereford map, Jerusalem is surrounded by the then-known world, composed of the continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa. The city is shown enclosed within a wall, and the crucified Christ is depicted above it. The choice is by no means arbitrary: there is a scriptural precedent for the use of Jerusalem as the center of the world, Ezekiel 5:5 stating "This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her."

This symbolic logic culminates in one of the most celebrated images in Renaissance cartography. Bünting's cloverleaf map is a woodcut engraving made in 1581 in Magdebourg; Jerusalem stands at its center, surrounded by Europe, Asia, and Africa. This map illustrates a medieval style of cartography in which the world is depicted symbolically rather than through mathematical projection. Its author had no practical ambitions whatsoever: the Protestant theologian and cartographer Heinrich Bünting created in 1581 a symbolic map of the world, hand-painted and shaped like a three-leaf clover, placing Jerusalem at the center to underscore its central role in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; from this center radiated three continents — Europe, Africa, and Asia. Here, the scriptural tradition and the cartographic object speak to each other explicitly: the map is an exegesis in images.

The invention of the printing press multiplied views of Jerusalem, yet without increasing their accuracy. Engraving workshops, lacking direct observation, copied earlier models or reconstructed the city from biblical descriptions. The celebrated Nuremberg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel (1493) offers a prime example: its view of Jerusalem, like those of so many other cities in the same volume, belongs to convention rather than to survey, with certain plates serving interchangeably to depict multiple cities. These representations follow a logic of transmitted Memory: they render visible a mental Jerusalem, conforming to the pious reader's expectations, in which the Temple — often conflated with the Muslim Dome of the Rock, renamed Templum Domini — occupies a place of honor. The "plan" thus functions as an edifying icon rather than as a document. This graphic tradition, which survives into the seventeenth century, constitutes a precious testimony to the European imagination of the Holy Land, independent of its actual topographic value [based on iconographic conventions studied in Renaissance cartography, Tulane University].

The Temple poses a singular problem: destroyed in 70 CE, it was never mapped during its existence. Any representation of its plan is therefore a reconstruction, founded on textual sources rather than on physical remains. Two corpora dominate. A detailed description of the Herodian temple is provided by Josèphe, while the Mishna, completed around 200 CE, delivers a plan of the temple apparently corresponding to the pre-Herodian structure, probably built following the Maccabean revolt of 168–164 BCE. The tractate Middot of the Mishna details the measurements and layout of the courtyards, while in addition to the temple building itself, the sacred enclosure (the Greek temenos) comprised several courts and structures.

The dimensions transmitted by these sources still serve as the basis for modern reconstructions. According to Josèphe and the Mishna, the Temple Mount measured approximately 500 cubits by 500 cubits, roughly 450 metres by 450 metres, with some estimates placing the platform enlarged by Hérode at several dozen acres. The very height of the sanctuary was the subject of ancient debate, since Hérode reminded the people that the height of the Second Temple was sixty cubits less than that of the First. These numerical data make a plan possible, but the absence of exhaustive excavations beneath the current esplanade maintains an irreducible element of conjecture: here, textual archive and architectural reconstruction partially confirm one another without ever being verified on the ground.

The 20th century transforms the "plan" into volume. The most influential model was designed by a renowned archaeologist. The Second Temple model was designed by Hebrew University archaeology professor Michael Avi-Yonah in 1966, then transferred to the Israel Museum in 2006. The model covers nearly an acre and recreates the layout and architectural style of Jerusalem in 66 CE, that is, on the eve of the great Jewish revolt against Rome. Built at a scale of 1/50, this detailed replica of the Second Temple was originally commissioned by Hans Kroch for his Holyland Hotel, hence its common name, the "Holyland Model."

The object is not static: Professor Michael Avi-Yonah was its original consultant, and the model has been updated several times on the basis of new archaeological discoveries. This capacity for revision marks the epistemological break with medieval maps: the model no longer claims to illustrate an intangible theological truth, but to represent a provisional state of knowledge, open to correction through excavation. It nonetheless remains a carrier of identity and meaning. The Avi-Yonah model illustrates the interaction between archaeology and Jewish identity in modern Israel; the Holyland model was commissioned between 1962 and 1966, reflecting Israeli-Jewish claims over Jerusalem. Thus, even in its most scientific form, the plan of Jerusalem remains an object of Memory.

Surveying this long series, from the tessellates of Madaba to the resins of the Musée d'Israël, a common grammar emerges. The plan of Jerusalem fulfills three functions that are often superimposed. It is first an instrument of devotion: it allows the prevented pilgrim to travel in spirit, and the faithful to meditate on the topography of salvation. It is then a cosmological argument, placing the city at the center of the world to signify its spiritual primacy, as attested unanimously by the patristic and biblical sources mentioned above. It is finally, in the contemporary era, a scientific document, subject to the permanent revision dictated by research.

The place of the Temple within this whole remains singular. An absent object by virtue of its destruction, it can only be evoked, deduced, or restored; its plan is a work of erudition as much as of regulated imagination. The textual sources — Josèphe, the Mishna — play here the role that vestiges play elsewhere, and rigor consists in never confusing the reconstruction with the survey. It is in this assumed gap between what is preserved and what is restored that the heritage value of the object resides.

The "Plan of Jerusalem and the Temple" is not a single object but a multi-century iconographic tradition, in which each era projected its beliefs, its knowledge, and its claims. The Madaba mosaic marks its earliest surviving milestone; the medieval maps and Bünting's cloverleaf express its symbolic dimension, placing Jerusalem at the center of the world rather than resorting to a mathematical projection; Avi-Yonah's model represents its scientific culmination, recreating the city as it stood in 66 CE. Through these metamorphoses, one constant endures: the conviction, inherited from Ezekiel, that this city is not a city like any other. To draw the plan of Jerusalem and its Temple has always been, and remains still, to trace the outline of a place where Memory and History never cease to answer one another.