Known as the “stepped street,” or the “Pilgrimage Road,” the wide stone slabs that make up this pedestrian street were believed to be built by the Romans. The road was rediscovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority in 2004, after a sewage pipe burst. Archaeologists expect visitors to be able to walk the length of the road in two years, following the completion of an intricate excavation process.PaleoJudaica posts on the Pilgrimage Road excavation and its discoveries are here (and links), here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and links.For more than a decade now, archaeologists have overseen an underground excavation of the road, using heavy iron beams to prop up the above-ground infrastructure while they hollow out everything that has accumulated on top of the road over the past two millennia. Historians and archaeologists assert that the road connected the Pool of Siloam, a Roman-era pool used by Jewish pilgrims as a ritual bath, to the Second Temple.
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