From the moment its massive walls and towers rose above Jerusalem’s western ridge in the early 2000s, the Holyland project made itself impossible to miss.
Drivers on the main thoroughfare tilted their heads skyward, tourists pointed at it from the Haas Promenade, and longtime residents whispered that the Holy City’s familiar skyline of domes and spires had been reconfigured overnight.
Reactions were swift and sharp. Some critics called it a “monster,” while others described it as a “strategic threat to society.” Even one of the architects admitted bitterly that his vision had been “murdered.”
But Holyland was never just another apartment complex. It marked a radical break from what came before, sent a former mayor turned prime minister to jail, and forced the ancient city to confront a question that still echoes today: Who decides what Jerusalem should look like and how high it may rise?
Before the towers
Zoltan Harmat designed the Holyland Hotel in the 1950s, a quieter landmark on the same ridge. Its real star attraction was outdoors. Archaeologist Michael Avi-Yonah celebrated his scale model of Second Temple Jerusalem by installing it in the hotel gardens. For decades, schoolchildren and tourists scrambled up the hill to gaze down at the miniature walls, palaces, and colonnaded streets.
By the 1990s, the model had moved to a new home, the hotel was fading, and developers fixed their sights on the site. They planned to combine mid-rise blocks with signature towers at Holyland Park, redefining both the ridge and the city’s silhouette.
The cast of architects was impressive. Ram Karmi, an Israel Prize laureate, provided the master plan in collaboration with Spector-Amisar Architects. Tishby-Rozin Architects designed the long horizontal “wall” of blocks. Moshe Tzur handled the towers. On paper, the ambitions were noble: Karmi envisioned monumentality with elegance, integrated into the topography; Tzur defended his towers as land-efficient and sensitive to the slope.
But when the concrete and glass arrived, the public verdict was unforgiving.
Architectural historian David Kroyanker dismissed Holyland as “a monster” with a “sinister” aura. Karmi himself, never shy with words, lamented: “I think it is very ugly, an eyesore. Those who executed the project murdered my concept.” It was an extraordinary reversal – the very architect who conceived the plan condemning the outcome. Few projects in Jerusalem have provoked such strong words from their own creators.
Controversy and consequences
However, focusing only on appearances misses the deeper story. In Jerusalem, buildings are never neutral. Approving high-rises on that ridge wasn’t just about adding apartments; it was about rewriting unwritten rules that had shaped the city for generations. Then-mayor Ehud Olmert, who later became Israel’s prime minister, was found guilty in 2014 of bending those rules a bit too much. He ultimately served four years of a six-year jail sentence.
Planners had long capped building heights, insisted on using Jerusalem stone, and preserved the low-rise rhythm of neighborhoods. Towers belonged in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem. Holyland broke that consensus. With its vertical reach, it announced that the city was no longer bound to horizontal modesty.
Every skyline is the product of struggle – not just architects but zoning boards, developers, politicians, and neighborhood protests. Holyland made that tug of war visible. Conservationists argued; expansionists built.
In Rome or Paris, heritage usually wins. In Jerusalem – where land is scarce, population growth is expanding, and symbolism is heavy – the balance is different.
And yet, when you walk the grounds of Holyland today and talk to residents, another side emerges. They speak of panoramic views over the Judean Hills, of sunlight pouring into apartments, of the convenience of modern comfort in a city often prized for antiquity over livability. For them, Holyland is not a cautionary tale – it’s home.
That paradox – critics condemning while residents flourish – is the essence of architecture’s strange power. A building can be scorned from afar yet loved from within.
A vote in concrete
Jerusalem is forever caught between the weight of its past and the pressure of its future. Land is scarce, housing demand fierce, and every new tower proposal is cast as either betrayal or salvation. Should the city cling to its low-rise, stone-built identity? Or should it embrace verticality as the logic of modern life?
Buildings outlast the committees, arguments, and headlines that give them birth. Once built, they vote with their presence. Holyland’s vote was decisive: Jerusalem can – and perhaps must – build taller and denser than before. The complex embodies Israel’s double instinct: to break old rules boldly, and to fret over what may be lost in the process.
Holyland is no ordinary development. It is a referendum cast in concrete and glass. Will Jerusalem’s future remain written in domes and stone, or will towers increasingly claim the skyline? The towers still dominate their ridge like a blunt exclamation point. But the real drama lies not in their shadow – it lies in the choices Jerusalem has yet to make about the city it wants to become.■
Jay Garfinkel is a Jerusalem-based photographer specializing in still life and landscape photography, who has exhibited widely in the United States and Israel. His work has been featured in Landscape Photography Magazine and Lens Culture Magazine.