Talpiot (31°45′N 35°13′E / 31.750°N 35.217°E; Hebrew: תלפיות), is a neighbourhood in southeastern Jerusalem established in the 1922 by Zionist pioneers. The neighbourhood was evacuated following the 1929 Hebron massacre. In the wake of the Israeli War of Independence, Talpiot became a frontier neighborhood, surrounded by Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem, but Israelis continued to live there. The neighbourhood expanded significantly after the 1967 Six-Day War, with new residential districts going up on the lands that once separated Israel and Jordan, including territory formerly controlled by the UN. A large industrial zone is located on the outskirts of residential Talpiot. For many years, an old British army camp known as Mahane Allenby was a prominent feature of Talpiot. In the last decade, the camp was razed and luxury towers were built on the spot.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, lived in this neighbourhood for many years of his life. After his death, his home was turned into a museum where his study had been preserved intact. One of his neighbors was the eminent scholar Joseph Gedalja Klausner, the uncle of Israeli author Amos Oz. In his autobiographical novel A Tale of Love and Darkness (2003), Oz writes that Agnon and Klausner were not fond of one another and kept their distance. The founder of Modern Hebrew, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, built a home in Talpiot, but died before he moved in.
Talpiot today consists of several parts. "Old Talpiot" is the historic and well-established residential neighborhood founded in 1922. North Talpiot -- also known as Arnona -- is a newer neighborhood, built since 1967, offering panoramic views of Jerusalem's Old City. Across Derech Hevron to the west is the Talpiot Industrial Zone which has become one of Jerusalem's main shopping districts and a popular nightspot. To the east is the neighbourhood of East Talpiot.
Talpiot has become a hub of Jerusalem nightlife. There are several shopping malls Talpiot, a large cinema, a bowling alley, and dozens of night clubs and discos. One of Israel's oldest and most popular nightclubs, Haoman 17, is in Talpiot.
Connecting East Talpiot and Talpiot is the Haas Promenade Hebrew: הטיילת (ha-Tayelet). From this vantage point atop a ridge overlooking Jerusalem's Old City and the Dead Sea, Abraham was shown Mount Moriah as the site for the binding of Isaac as recorded in the Bible. This area was No Man's Land between the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the reunification of Jerusalem as a result of the Six-Day War in 1967. At one end of the Promenade is the United Nations Middle East Headquarters which was formerly the home of the British high commissioner during the British Mandate of Palestine -- on a hill also known as the Hill of Evil Counsel. Hidden under this ridge are the remains of an aqueduct built by Herod the Great to bring water from the south, by way of his summer palace Herodian, to the Second Temple. Today the Promenade is a frequent stopping place for tourists and Israelis alike. The Jerusalem Peace Forest, connecting East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem is below the Promenade. The Jerusalem municipality plants a tree in this forest for every child born in Jerusalem, representing the eternal hope of peace bridging the Arab and Jewish populations.
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Main article: Versailles wedding hall |
The May 24, 2001, collapse of the Versailles wedding hall in the Talpiot area of Jerusalem killed 23 and injured more than 200. The collapse was blamed on poor construction practices. The disaster is considered Israel's worst civil disaster.