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A covered market lane in the Old City of Jerusalem

The Old City of Jerusalem · Where to stay

Where to stay in the Old City of Jerusalem

Private cars are barred from the Old City between nine in the morning and six at night, which is the fact that shapes every other decision about sleeping inside the walls.

Dan Freeman / Unsplash

Cars in the walled city

Barred 9am to 6pm

Private vehicles may not enter the Old City in those hours, on the municipality's own tourism site. Deliveries go in on hand-carts.

VAT on a tourist's hotel bill

Zero

Hotel stays and car rentals are exempt for foreign visitors. A ministerial committee dropped a Finance Ministry plan to cancel the exemption in March 2023.

Rooms at the largest hotel inside the walls

100

The Gloria, just inside Jaffa Gate, which describes itself as the only tourist class hotel located within the Old City walls

Hotels in East Jerusalem

19

With 1,100 rooms between them, alongside 12 guesthouses holding 450 more, counted by the Arab Hotel Association in September 2024

Almost nobody who visits the Old City sleeps in it. The walled city is a dense residential quarter under a square kilometre in area, and the beds inside it amount to a few dozen small hotels, hostels and pilgrim guesthouses, most with fewer rooms than one floor of a modern hotel outside the gates. The Gloria, just inside Jaffa Gate, publishes 100 rooms and calls itself the only tourist class hotel within the walls. Everything else inside is smaller, often much smaller. This guide covers those places first, then where most visitors actually sleep, which is a few minutes' walk beyond the gates on one side or the other.

Sleeping inside buys something specific: the lanes at six in the morning with the shutters still down, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre before the first group, the call to prayer from three directions, and no gate queue to get back in. It costs something equally specific. No vehicle can reach most addresses inside the walls in daylight, so bags come the last stretch over cobbles and steps, and a hotel here is unlikely to have a lift, a car park or a night porter. Which area to base yourself in is the decision that actually matters, and it comes first below.

8 places to stay

The places to stay worth the trip in The Old City of Jerusalem

Our pick and why, then everything the listing knows, with the date it was pulled.

  1. 01

    Gloria Hotel

    The least complicated bed inside the walls, two minutes from Jaffa Gate

    The Gloria has been letting rooms since the late 1950s and has been run by the same family for close to half a century, which in a quarter where small hotels open and close with the season counts for a good deal. It publishes 100 air-conditioned rooms on Latin Patriarchate Street, just inside Jaffa Gate and looking on to the citadel, with a restaurant doing set buffet menus, a bar and meeting rooms, and it describes itself as the only tourist class hotel located within the Old City walls. The scale is the point: it is large enough to absorb a coach party, to keep a staffed desk and to have someone who can help with bags, which most places inside the walls are not. Against that, it is a functional hotel rather than a characterful one, and rooms vary in a building of this age. For a first visit, with the Holy Sepulchre, the citadel and the souq all a few minutes away on foot, it is the straightforward answer.

    Some rooms are in an annexe across the street from the main building. Ask which one you are booked into if stairs or a late arrival matter.

    “Very friendly service, good room, top location to explore old Jerusalem”
    A reviewer, quoted by Google under the listing.
    4.4320 ratings

    87% of raters gave four or five stars.

    Google Maps, retrieved . Ratings move; this one is a snapshot, not a live figure.

    Address
    Latin Patriarchate St 33, Jerusalem
    Kitchen
    Hotel, Bar, Indoor lodging
    Map, hours and reviews

  2. 02

    Spanish house in Jerusalem

    The Western Wall on a flat walk, and a Shabbat spent inside the walls

    This is the Sephardic House, at 1 Batei Mahase Street in the Jewish Quarter, listed by Google under a literal rendering of its Hebrew name. It occupies a stone building the hotel dates to the end of the nineteenth century, arranged round an internal courtyard planted in the Sephardic manner, and it publishes 51 rooms in three separate wings: a de-luxe wing of 12 rooms and 3 suites, a six-room wing used for family events, and 30 standard rooms. What it offers that no hotel on the other side of the Old City can is position: the Western Wall, the Cardo and the quarter's restored synagogues are a short and relatively flat walk, which matters in a place where nearly everything else involves steps. It is the obvious choice for a family in the Old City for a bar mitzvah, and the hotel keeps a named coordinator for kashrut and accessibility questions. The trade is that the Jewish Quarter is the quietest part of the walled city and it closes down hard from Friday afternoon, so an evening here is a very still one.

    “The hotel was so nice and an amazing location and the food was 10/10”
    A reviewer, quoted by Google under the listing.
    4.1604 ratings

    78% of raters gave four or five stars.

    Google Maps, retrieved . Ratings move; this one is a snapshot, not a live figure.

    Address
    Batei Mahase St 1, Jerusalem
    Kitchen
    Hotel
    Map, hours and reviews

  3. 03

    New Imperial Hotel Jerusalem

    A grand old Jaffa Gate address, if you know what you are booking into

    The New Imperial occupies one of the oldest buildings at Jaffa Gate, documented in the record since the 1800s, and it has taken guests for over a century. It publishes 50 bedrooms in single, twin, double and family configurations, a roof terrace looking over the Old City, a Middle Eastern breakfast buffet included in the rate and a desk staffed around the clock, and it sits at the point where a large share of Old City walking tours begin. It is also at the centre of a dispute a visitor should know about. Leases on the New Imperial and the neighbouring Petra were sold in 2004 by officials of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to shell companies acting for Ateret Cohanim; the Patriarchate says the signatory had no authority and had been bribed, and refuses to accept the sale, while the Israeli Supreme Court rejected its final appeal in June 2022 and eviction proceedings against the Palestinian tenants who run the hotels followed. The rooms are high-ceilinged, worn in places and unlike anything built since, and the position at the gate is as good as it gets inside the walls.

    “The rooms are very clean and the staff is extremely kind and accommodating!”
    A reviewer, quoted by Google under the listing.
    4.3396 ratings

    81% of raters gave four or five stars.

    Google Maps, retrieved . Ratings move; this one is a snapshot, not a live figure.

    Address
    Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem
    Kitchen
    Hotel
    Map, hours and reviews

  4. 04

    Hashimi Hotel

    Waking up in the souq, cheaply, without a drink in the building

    The Hashimi is at 73 Khan el-Zeit, which is to say it is on the covered market street itself, in the Muslim Quarter, a few minutes from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in one direction and the Via Dolorosa in the other. Its roof terrace, reached from the top floor, gives an unusually good view over the domes and rooftops, and it is the reason most guests remember the place. The hotel states plainly that it is totally alcohol-free and that smoking is not permitted in the rooms, and it keeps a laundry service, air conditioning and private bathrooms; it is not a hotel with a bar, a lobby lounge or room service, and it does not pretend to be. This is the closest thing the Old City has to a proper budget address with a front desk. The honest warning is the address itself: a market lane means shutters going up early, hand-carts before dawn and no vehicle able to get within a few hundred metres of the door.

    “The garden on the top floor overlooks Jerusalem and is breath taking.”
    A reviewer, quoted by Google under the listing.
    4.4898 ratings

    87% of raters gave four or five stars.

    Google Maps, retrieved . Ratings move; this one is a snapshot, not a live figure.

    Address
    Suq Khan El Zeit st. no 73, Jerusalem
    Kitchen
    Hotel
    Map, hours and reviews

  5. 05

    Mamilla Hotel

    A full-service hotel with the walls in the window

    Moshe Safdie's building is part of the Mamilla Center, the mixed-use district laid out on the ground between the Old City walls and modern west Jerusalem, and it was completed in 2009 with 194 rooms and suites. The outside is limestone with terracotta roof tiles, matched deliberately to the older buildings around it; the inside is Piero Lissoni's and does the opposite, stripped back and nearly unornamented. It stands on Alrov Mamilla Avenue with the walls, the Tower of David and Jaffa Gate in view, which puts the main gate of the Old City a short walk away across the road. This is the answer for anyone who wants a lift, a concierge, a spa and a bar and is willing to sleep outside the walls to get them, and it is the easiest base in the city for a traveller with heavy luggage or limited mobility. The trade is that the immediate setting is a modern shopping avenue, and the Old City at seven in the morning becomes something you walk to rather than wake up in.

    “Greatest location Stunning facility Amazing service”
    A reviewer, quoted by Google under the listing.
    4.53,554 ratings

    89% of raters gave four or five stars.

    Google Maps, retrieved . Ratings move; this one is a snapshot, not a live figure.

    Address
    Shlomo ha-Melekh St 11, Jerusalem, 94182
    Kitchen
    Hotel, Restaurant, Spa
    Map, hours and reviews

  6. 06

    Jerusalem Hotel

    A Saturday in a city that has shut, and dinner in a vine garden

    The building went up in 1890 as a palace for the Sharaf family, on ground that had held a Byzantine church, and it became a hotel after Sami Saadeh bought it in the 1960s; his son Raed took over in 1989 and restored the arched windows and high ceilings over the following years. It is small, at 14 guest rooms, each named for a woman who shaped some period of the city's building, and it is a two minute walk from Damascus Gate on Antar Ben Shaddad Street. The restaurant sits under a roof that opens in summer, there is a secluded vine garden, and the hotel runs music nights and film screenings; it also has its own parking, which almost nothing this close to the Old City does. Its practical advantage over anywhere west of the walls is the calendar: this side of the city does not keep Shabbat, so Saturday is an ordinary day with the kitchen open. Trade in East Jerusalem's hotels has been very thin since October 2023, so confirm the booking directly.

    “Staff were friendly, rooms were clean and cozy, and the food was amazing!”
    A reviewer, quoted by Google under the listing.
    4.4650 ratings

    86% of raters gave four or five stars.

    Google Maps, retrieved . Ratings move; this one is a snapshot, not a live figure.

    Address
    Antar Ben Shaddad 15, Jerusalem
    Kitchen
    Hotel, Cafe, Historical place
    Map, hours and reviews

  7. 07

    Leonardo Boutique Hotel Jerusalem

    Keeping Shabbat, keeping costs down, and walking to both the Old City and the market

    This is a mainstream city-centre hotel at 3 Monbaz Street, where it meets HaNevi'im, roughly ten minutes on foot from Jaffa Gate in one direction and from the Mahane Yehuda market in the other, with the light rail close by. Rooms run from small Comfort doubles up to studios and suites, and there are accessible rooms for guests with limited mobility. The kitchen holds a valid kashrut certificate under the Jerusalem Rabbinate, the lifts run on a Shabbat setting, breakfast is served until 10.30 on weekdays and 11.00 on Saturdays and festivals, and the hotel states that guests may not bring in or be supplied with a hotplate or urn. Underground parking is 80 NIS a night on a first-come basis. It is not an atmospheric building and it is not inside the walls; what it is, is the reliable middle option, and for anyone who needs a Shabbat-observant hotel without a resort price it is the obvious one.

    “Friendly staff, amazing food, clean, amazing location, perfect for Shabbat.”
    A reviewer, quoted by Google under the listing.
    4.63,024 ratings

    91% of raters gave four or five stars.

    Google Maps, retrieved . Ratings move; this one is a snapshot, not a live figure.

    Address
    Monbaz St 3, Jerusalem, 9515003
    Kitchen
    Hotel
    Map, hours and reviews

  8. 08

    Seven Arches Hotel

    The whole walled city out of the window, at the cost of everything else

    The Seven Arches opened on 20 March 1964, built by the Jordanian government on land belonging to the Jerusalem Waqf, designed by the American hotel architect William B. Tabler, and run for its first quarter century as the Jerusalem InterContinental. It has 196 rooms on the slope of the Mount of Olives in at-Tur, and the reason to book one is the view: the Kidron valley below and the entire walled city opposite, with the Dome of the Rock at the centre of it. The history is not comfortable, and a guest may want to know it: the access road cut through a section of the Jewish cemetery on the mount and destroyed graves, the property passed to the Custodian of Absentee Property after 1967, and its future has been contested since. What to weigh practically is isolation, because the walk down to Lions' Gate is steep, the walk back up is steeper, and there is very little within reach after dark. This is a hotel for the window and the sunset rather than for the evening.

    “An amazing view of the old city of Jerusalem from the Mt of Olives.”
    A reviewer, quoted by Google under the listing.
    4.0862 ratings

    75% of raters gave four or five stars.

    Google Maps, retrieved . Ratings move; this one is a snapshot, not a live figure.

    Address
    הר המשחה 15, Jerusalem
    Kitchen
    Hotel, Fur service
    Map, hours and reviews

The decision

Which side of the walls to sleep on, and what each side costs you

Inside the walls the choice narrows to three of the four quarters, the Armenian having almost nothing to let. The Christian Quarter around Jaffa Gate and Latin Patriarchate Street holds most of the hotel stock, is the easiest to reach with luggage, and puts the Holy Sepulchre and the citadel a few minutes away on foot. The Muslim Quarter, along Khan el-Zeit and Al-Wad, is where the souq actually is: livelier, cheaper, awake from dawn, closest to the Via Dolorosa and the gates of the Haram al-Sharif. The Jewish Quarter, rebuilt after 1967 and quieter than either, is the only part from which the Western Wall is a short flat walk, and the part that closes hardest for Shabbat.

West of the walls is where most visitors sleep. Mamilla, the district laid out between the walls and the modern centre, puts Jaffa Gate a short walk from a shopping avenue, a car park and restaurants that open late. Further west, the city centre around Jaffa Road gives cheaper rooms and a light rail stop at Safra Square, ten to fifteen minutes on foot from Jaffa Gate or five from New Gate. Everything on this side shuts from Friday afternoon to Saturday night, the tram included.

North and east of the walls behaves completely differently. The hotels along Salah al-Din Street, Nablus Road and the lanes behind Damascus Gate are mostly Palestinian family businesses in old stone houses; the Arab Hotel Association counted 19 of them with 1,100 rooms, and 12 guesthouses with 450 more, in September 2024. The advantage is the calendar: cafes here open on Saturday when west Jerusalem is shut, and Damascus Gate is two minutes away. The disadvantage is that trade has been very thin since October 2023, with several hotels partly or wholly closed, so confirm directly that a place is taking guests.

Above all of it is the Mount of Olives, a view rather than a neighbourhood: the whole walled city below the window, and almost nothing within reach after dark. The rule of thumb is one or two nights inside the walls if the Old City is the trip and the bags are small, Mamilla or the city centre if anyone needs a lift and a car park, and East Jerusalem if the Saturday matters.

The stock

Family hotel, pilgrim hospice, hostel, apartment: what is actually on offer

The Israeli accommodation categories that dominate the rest of the country are absent here. There is no kibbutz guesthouse in the Old City, no zimmer, no desert khan, no field school. There are four things instead: small family-run hotels of roughly ten to fifty rooms in converted stone houses; religious guesthouses, the oldest form of accommodation in the walled city and still among the best value; hostels, mostly in the Christian and Muslim quarters; and a growing number of self-catering apartments, particularly in the Jewish Quarter.

The guesthouses deserve their own paragraph because visitors routinely miss them. The Austrian Hospice at Via Dolorosa 3 was founded in 1854 as an ecclesiastical foundation of the Archbishop of Vienna, who still oversees it, and it calls itself the oldest Christian guesthouse in the city. It holds 124 beds in private rooms and dormitories, keeps a Viennese coffee house downstairs and a roof terrace that is one of the best free viewpoints inside the walls, and it takes anyone rather than only pilgrims. It also books out a long way ahead: groups are told to allow up to sixteen months. Other institutions run comparable houses nearby, and many are not on a booking site at all, so write to them directly.

Who owns the buildings is not a neutral question here. The New Imperial and the Petra, immediately inside Jaffa Gate, have been the subject of a twenty-year dispute over leases sold in 2004 by officials of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to shell companies acting for Ateret Cohanim, which settles Jewish families in Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem. The Patriarchate says the signatory acted without authority and took a bribe, and has never accepted the sale; the Israeli Supreme Court closed the last avenue of appeal in June 2022, and eviction proceedings against the Palestinian tenants who run the hotels followed. Across the valley the Seven Arches sits on Jerusalem Waqf land leased by the Jordanian government, and the road built to reach it in the 1960s cut through part of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. Both are matters of record, and both are still argued over.

The week

Friday and Saturday run three different calendars at once

Jerusalem keeps three weeks at once and the Old City is where they overlap. Friday is the Muslim day of congregational prayer and the approaches to the Haram al-Sharif fill around midday. Friday afternoon to Saturday nightfall is Shabbat, which closes the Jewish Quarter, west Jerusalem, the light rail and most buses. Sunday morning is when Christian institutions hold services and some church-run sites keep shorter hours. Any two-night stay runs into at least one of these.

In a mainstream Israeli hotel Shabbat has a visible shape. Lifts switch to a setting that stops at every floor so nobody has to press a button. Kitchens holding a kashrut certificate from the Jerusalem Rabbinate prepare Friday night and Saturday food in advance, and hotels generally forbid guests to bring in a hotplate or urn, which the Leonardo Boutique states outright as a safety rule. Breakfast runs later on Saturday: the same hotel serves until 10.30 on weekdays and 11.00 on Saturdays and festivals. Many front desks will not process a card payment until Saturday night, so settle up on Friday if you are checking out early.

The counterweight is that the Christian and Muslim quarters and the whole of East Jerusalem do not keep Shabbat. The souq lanes, the cafes behind Damascus Gate and the restaurants along Salah al-Din Street run an ordinary Saturday, which is the strongest practical argument for basing on that side. A Friday arrival needs planning: confirm when reception is staffed and how dinner is handled, and get to the hotel by early afternoon, because trains and most buses stop before sunset.

The bill

Breakfast, bags, parking, and the tax line that should not be there

Breakfast is included in the rate at almost every Israeli hotel and at most hotels inside the walls, and it is not a token one: the Israeli hotel buffet is a full spread of salads, cheeses, eggs, fish and bread, and Old City hotels serve a Middle Eastern version of it, as the New Imperial does at Jaffa Gate. Self-catering apartments and some guesthouses do not include it, which is worth checking, because very little inside the walls opens early enough to fix the problem.

Bags are the recurring complaint, and they follow from the vehicle rule. Private cars may not enter the Old City between 9am and 6pm, and even outside those hours most lanes are stepped and too narrow for a car. Drive in before nine or after six, ask whether the hotel can meet you at a gate with a cart, and pack for stairs rather than for wheels.

Parking is all outside the walls. The Jerusalem tourism office lists Karta at 1 Kariv Street by Jaffa Gate, Mamilla at 17 Kariv Street, Safra on Shivtei Yisrael Street, Mount Zion, and Givati near Dung Gate. Hotels west of the walls charge for their own bays: the Leonardo Boutique lists underground parking at 80 NIS a night, first come.

Finally, the tax. Foreign tourists are exempt from VAT on hotel accommodation and car rental in Israel, and this is not the airport refund that applies to shop purchases: the hotel applies it, so the amount should never appear on the bill at all. It is applied against a foreign passport and the entry permit issued at passport control, so carry both to check-in even if the room was paid online, and expect the rate quoted on a hotel's English-language site to be net of VAT already. Israeli citizens, including dual nationals who entered on an Israeli passport, pay in full. The Finance Ministry proposed cancelling the exemption in 2023 and a ministerial committee dropped the plan, so it stands, but it has been argued over before.

The full list

Every place to stay we found in The Old City of Jerusalem

All 20 that Google Maps returned for this area, ranked by rating weighted for how many people rated it, so a five from three people does not outrank a four and a half from three thousand.

Every place to stay in The Old City of Jerusalem, from a Google Maps snapshot taken on 2026-08-13
NameKindRatingRatingsPriceWhere
Leonardo Boutique Hotel Jerusalemמלון לאונרדו בוטיק ירושלים - Leonardo Boutique Hotel Jerusalem‎Hotel4.63,024n/aJerusalem
Petrakis InnHotel4.919n/aJerusalem
Western Wall Luxury HouseHotel4.823n/aJerusalem
Mamilla HotelHotel4.53,554n/aJerusalem
David Citadel HotelHotel4.53,300n/aJerusalem
old city hotelHotel4.610n/aJerusalem
Hashimi HotelHotel4.4898n/aJerusalem
Jerusalem HotelHotel4.4650n/aJerusalem
Gloria HotelHotel4.4320n/aJerusalem
Saladin Boutique HotelHotel4.425n/aJerusalem
Jerusalem boutique hotelHotel4.425n/aJerusalem
The David Story HotelHotel4.358n/aJerusalem
De Cardo HotelHotel4.3161n/aJerusalem
New Imperial Hotel JerusalemHotel4.3396n/aJerusalem
The Golden Walls HotelHotel4.2556n/aJerusalem
Spanish house in JerusalemHotel4.1604n/aJerusalem
St George Hotel JerusalemHotel4.1756n/aJerusalem
Holy Land HotelHotel4.1858n/aJerusalem
Citadel Youth HostelHotel4.0328n/aJerusalem
Seven Arches HotelHotel4.0862n/aJerusalem

Google Maps, retrieved . Ratings and counts move daily and this table does not: it is a snapshot, and it is here so the ranking above can be checked rather than taken on trust. Prices are Google's own price band, not a menu price.

A covered market lane in the Old City of Jerusalem

Practical

What to know before you go

  • Ask the hotel how it handles bags before you book. Private cars cannot enter the Old City between 9am and 6pm, and many addresses inside the walls are reached only over steps.
  • Carry your passport and the entry permit slip to check-in even if the room was paid online. The zero rate of VAT on a tourist's hotel bill is applied at the desk against those documents.
  • Settle the bill before Shabbat begins if you are checking out on a Saturday. Many Israeli hotel front desks will not process a card payment until nightfall on Saturday.
  • If the trip includes a Saturday and you want to eat out, base yourself in the Muslim or Christian quarters or in East Jerusalem. West of the walls, restaurants, shops and the light rail all stop.
  • Book religious guesthouses direct and early. The Austrian Hospice tells groups to allow up to sixteen months, and several similar houses do not appear on booking sites at all.
  • Do not hire a car for a stay inside the walls. Nothing there has parking, the public car parks are all outside the gates, and everything worth seeing is on foot.
  • Ask which floor the room is on and whether there is a lift. Most Old City hotels occupy old houses over several levels and do not have one.
  • Check that a hotel in East Jerusalem is actually operating before you rely on the reservation. Several have been partly or wholly closed since October 2023.

Dan Freeman / Unsplash

The figures

Numbers behind this page

Each figure carries the year it belongs to and links the source it came from.

MeasureFigureAs ofSource
Rooms, Gloria Hotel1002026gloria-hotel.com
Bedrooms, New Imperial Hotel502026newimperial.com
Rooms, the Sephardic House, Jewish Quarter512026sephardichouse.co.il
Guest rooms, Jerusalem Hotel142024jerusalemstory.com
Beds, Austrian Hospice, Via Dolorosa1242026austrianhospice.com
Rooms and suites, Mamilla Hotel1942009safdiearchitects.com
Rooms, Seven Arches Hotel, Mount of Olives1962026en.wikipedia.org
Overnight parking, Leonardo Boutique Jerusalem80 NIS2026fattal.co.il

The rest of the The Old City of Jerusalem guide

Things to do in The Old City of Jerusalem →Where to eat in The Old City of Jerusalem →Getting to The Old City of Jerusalem →The best time to visit The Old City of Jerusalem →

Sources and further reading

Every link below was opened and checked when this page was written. Official statements are marked as such: they are the subject's own account, not an independent one.

  1. OfficialGloria Hotelgloria-hotel.com
    About us

    100 air-conditioned rooms, operating since the late 1950s, family run for almost half a century, and the claim to be the only tourist class hotel within the Old City walls

  2. OfficialNew Imperial Hotelnewimperial.com
    The East New Imperial Hotel Jerusalem

    50 bedrooms in four categories, roof terrace, complimentary Middle Eastern breakfast buffet, 24-hour reception, and a building documented since the 1800s at Jaffa Gate

  3. OfficialHashimi Hotelhashimihotel.com
    Amenities

    The hotel's own statement that it is totally alcohol-free and that smoking is not permitted in rooms, plus laundry, air conditioning and private bathrooms

  4. OfficialThe Sephardic House Hotelsephardichouse.co.il
    About the Sephardic House

    1 Batei Mahase Street in the Jewish Quarter, 51 rooms across a de-luxe wing of 12 rooms and 3 suites, a six-room wing and 30 standard rooms, the Sephardic courtyard, and the named kashrut and accessibility coordinator

  5. OfficialJerusalem Hotel, Saadeh familyjrshotel.com
    Jerusalem Hotel

    An old Arab mansion family managed since 1960, restoration from 1991, rooms named after women who shaped the city, the vine garden, the opening restaurant roof, and free parking a short walk from Damascus Gate

  6. OfficialSafdie Architectssafdiearchitects.com
    Mamilla Hotel

    194 rooms completed in 2009 as part of the Mamilla Center, limestone walls and terracotta roof tiles, interiors by Piero Lissoni, and views to the Old City walls, the Tower of David and Jaffa Gate

  7. OfficialFattal Hotelsfattal.co.il
    Leonardo Boutique Hotel Jerusalem

    3 Monbaz Street at HaNevi'im, kashrut certificate under the Jerusalem Rabbinate, Shabbat lift, breakfast to 10.30 on weekdays and 11.00 on Saturdays and festivals, no hotplates or urns, underground parking at 80 NIS a night, and about ten minutes on foot to Jaffa Gate

  8. OfficialAustrian Hospice, Jerusalemaustrianhospice.com
    Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family

    Founded in 1854 under the Archbishop of Vienna, at Via Dolorosa 3, 124 beds, described as the oldest Christian guesthouse in the city, with Cafe Triest and a terrace, and group bookings up to sixteen months ahead

  9. OfficialiTravelJerusalem, Jerusalem Development Authorityitraveljerusalem.com
    Getting to the Old City

    Private cars barred from the Old City between 9am and 6pm, the light rail stop at Safra Square, and the car parks at Karta, Mamilla, Safra, Mount Zion and Givati

  10. ReportingJerusalem Storyjerusalemstory.com
    Jerusalem Hotel: a journey into history, heritage and Arabic poetry just steps from Damascus Gate

    The building put up in 1890 for the Sharaf family, bought by Sami Saadeh in the 1960s and taken over by Raed Saadeh in 1989, its 14 guest rooms, and occupancy since October 2023

  11. ReportingThe Times of Israeltimesofisrael.com
    Supreme Court upholds Greek church sales to far-right group, ending legal battle

    The June 2022 ruling on the 2004 sale of the Imperial and Petra hotel leases to companies acting for Ateret Cohanim, the Patriarchate's objections, and the eviction proceedings against the Palestinian tenants

  12. ReportingJerusalem Storyjerusalemstory.com
    On World Tourism Day, tourism has evaporated in Jerusalem

    East Jerusalem's tourism stock in September 2024: 19 hotels with 1,100 rooms and 12 guesthouses with 450 rooms, and the closures across the sector

  13. ReportingThe Jerusalem Postjpost.com
    Israeli VAT exemption for tourists to continue despite finance minister's objection

    The exemption covers hotel stays and car rentals for foreign tourists, and the ministerial committee's decision in March 2023 to drop the Finance Ministry's plan to cancel it

  14. ReferenceWikipediaen.wikipedia.org
    Seven Arches Hotel

    Opened 20 March 1964, built by the Jordanian government on Jerusalem Waqf land to a design by William B. Tabler, 196 rooms, run as the Jerusalem InterContinental, and the access road cut through the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives

Where to stay in the Old City of Jerusalem: common questions

Can you actually stay inside the Old City walls?+

Yes, but the choice is small. The walled city holds a few dozen small hotels, hostels and religious guesthouses, and the largest of them, the Gloria just inside Jaffa Gate, publishes 100 rooms and describes itself as the only tourist class hotel within the walls. Most of the rest have between ten and fifty rooms, in old houses on lanes no vehicle can enter. The bulk of Jerusalem's accommodation is outside the gates on either side.

Is it worth staying inside the Old City rather than outside?+

It is worth it for one or two nights if the Old City itself is the reason for the trip and your luggage is light. You get the lanes at dawn, the Holy Sepulchre before the groups and no gate queues. You give up lifts, parking, easy arrival with bags and, in most cases, anywhere to eat late. For a longer stay, or with heavy cases or limited mobility, Mamilla or the city centre is the better base.

Where is the best area to stay for the Western Wall?+

The Jewish Quarter, which is the only part of the Old City from which the Western Wall is a short and relatively flat walk. The Sephardic House on Batei Mahase Street is the main hotel there, and there are self-catering apartments in the same streets. Everywhere else inside the walls involves steps and a longer walk, and outside the walls the flattest approach is from Dung Gate.

How do I get luggage to a hotel inside the Old City?+

On foot, in most cases. Private cars are barred from the Old City between 9am and 6pm, and even outside those hours most lanes are stepped and too narrow for a vehicle. Arrive before nine or after six if you are driving, ask the hotel in advance whether someone can meet you at a gate with a cart, and pack for stairs rather than for wheels.

Is there parking at Old City hotels?+

Not inside the walls. The Jerusalem tourism office lists the public car parks at Karta (1 Kariv Street, by Jaffa Gate), Mamilla (17 Kariv Street), Safra on Shivtei Yisrael Street, Mount Zion and Givati near Dung Gate. Hotels west of the walls charge for their own bays, for example 80 NIS a night at the Leonardo Boutique in the city centre. A few hotels in East Jerusalem, such as the Jerusalem Hotel near Damascus Gate, do have their own parking.

Do tourists pay VAT on hotels in Israel?+

No. Hotel accommodation and car rental are exempt from VAT for foreign visitors, and unlike the refund on shop purchases it is applied by the hotel rather than claimed at the airport, so the tax should never appear on the bill. Carry your passport and the entry permit issued at passport control to check-in, because that is what the exemption is applied against. Israeli citizens, including dual nationals who entered on an Israeli passport, pay it in full.

What happens in an Israeli hotel on Shabbat?+

From Friday afternoon to Saturday nightfall the lifts switch to a setting that stops at every floor, kitchens with a rabbinate certificate serve food prepared in advance, breakfast runs later on Saturday, and many front desks will not process card payments until Saturday night. Hotels generally do not permit guests to bring in hotplates or urns. West Jerusalem outside the hotel closes too, including the light rail and most restaurants and shops.

Where can I eat on a Saturday if my hotel is closed for Shabbat?+

In the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City, and in East Jerusalem. Neither keeps Shabbat, so the souq lanes, the cafes behind Damascus Gate and the restaurants along Salah al-Din Street run an ordinary Saturday. If a Saturday is part of your stay, this is the strongest single reason to base yourself on that side of the walls.

Is breakfast included at Old City hotels?+

Usually, and it is a full one. Israeli hotel breakfast is a buffet of salads, cheeses, eggs, fish and bread, and Old City hotels serve a Middle Eastern version of it: the New Imperial at Jaffa Gate, for instance, includes a Middle Eastern breakfast buffet in the rate. Self-catering apartments and some religious guesthouses do not include it, which is worth checking, because little inside the walls opens early enough to solve the problem.

Are the Christian guesthouses open to non-pilgrims?+

Yes. The Austrian Hospice at Via Dolorosa 3, founded in 1854 and describing itself as the oldest Christian guesthouse in the city, takes individual travellers as well as groups across its 124 beds, and other institutions in and around the walls do the same. They are often the best value inside the Old City and they have roof terraces and gardens that hotels of the same price do not. Book direct and book early: the Austrian Hospice asks groups to allow up to sixteen months.

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