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The armenian cathedral en old Jerusalem.

The Armenian Quarter occupies the southwest corner of the Old City. It covers one-sixth of the area contained inside the ancient walls. It is believed that between 35 and 25 B.C., the Jewish King, Herod built a fortress and his palace along the western wall of the Quarter which at that time was called The Upper City ( Zion) since it was ( and now is ) relatively on higher ground than the other Quarters. After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70, the area was occupied by the Tenth Roman ( Fretensis) Legion and became a government center. In the beginning of the twentieth century this western-most section of the Quarter was used as a cow pasture and to this day it is called as such.

The Armenian Quarter is a complex of several historical sites around which Armenians congregated over the last millennium to form a homogeneous entity housing a self-sustained community with its churches, schools, public and social institutions, residences and historical monuments. The compound consists of the St. James Armenian Convent and the adjacent residential neighborhood located toward the center of the Old City.

The Armenian Quarter is reached through the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate Road, a narrow, one-way street extending through the center of the Quarter and ending at Zion Gate in the south. The main gate of St. James Convent opens to this road which starts just below Jaffa Gate at the western wall of the Old City. Just to the south of and adjacent to Jaffa Gate a wide portion of the wall was demolished in 1896 to make way for vehicular access. It is one of two major vehicular entrances into the Old City. The other is located at the southeast corner of the