One-Day Jerusalem Tours

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Only One Day to See Jerusalem?

Put on your walking shoes and let's start our favorite Jerusalem tours!

Our best one-day Jerusalem tours: After years of backtracking all over town, we've fine tuned our one-day tours to hit all the hot spots in a few hours without burning you out. You want to enjoy the experience, not spend the day sprinting from here to there!

Maximize your experience by following our suggestions for touring Jerusalem in a day - morning and afternoon - and consider which tours best suit your style.

In the Morning

Fortunately, the top Jerusalem holy sites are all in the Old City in walking range of each other. Start your day by visiting the following three places and exploring the Old City. Depending on how in-depth you want your visit to be, you can hit all three in one morning and still have the afternoon left over for something else (like souvenir shopping!); or you can spend your entire day studying just one of them.

They are:

the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the last remnant of the Temple, Judaism's holiest site

the Western Wall Jerusalem

the Via Dolorosa and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre - where according to Christian tradition Jesus was buried

Holy Sepulchre Church in Jerusalem

the Dome of the Rock - Islam's oldest shrine

Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem

When you’re done with the tour of the Old City, you may want to browse through the colorful shuk near Jaffa Gate, make your way back to the Jewish Quarter plaza for a light lunch or to the Cardo for some souvenir shopping.

In the Afternoon

If you’re up to another excursion in the afternoon, choose one or two from our list of 10 best Old City sites or head outside the walls for a taste of what modern Jerusalem has to offer.

Route 99 Bus Tour

Another activity we highly recommend as part of a one-day visit is the Route 99 Egged City Tour Bus.

Jerusalem tour in a double-decker bus

Especially after walking all morning, it's nice to relax in one of our only double-decker buses while enjoying a 2-hour Jerusalem tour. The bus takes you all the way around the city with a running commentary by a digital tour guide - put on your earphones and choose one of eight languages (Hebrew, Arabic, English, French, German, Russian, Italian and Spanish).

Pick the air-conditioned downstairs for comfort or the open-top, breezy upstairs for better views and photography, since there are no windows.

Around the Old City you can pick up Route 99 at the marked bus stops at Dung Gate, Jaffa Gate, Lions Gate and the City of David.

The bus runs every 2 to 2.5 hours, from 11:00 to 18:00, Sunday through Thursday.

For the 2-hour Jerusalem tour (no hopping on or off), buy the Panoramic tour ticket. To be able to get on and off the bus at any of 29 tourism sites as often as you like, get the 12-hour Pass.

Book your 99 Bus tour here.

Getting the Most Out of Your Jerusalem Tour

You could try walking through the Old City on your own but, without a tour guide most Jerusalem tours may not make much sense. If you want to understand the importance of what you’re looking at, you’ll need a guide of some kind to walk you through. Plus, to get a taste of these sites in context, it's worth exploring the Old City as a whole.

Up Close and Personal With a Tour Guide

If you want your own personal tour guide (one you can ask questions to!), so you can get the most you possibly can out of your sightseeing, we suggest you contact one of our recommended tour guides. They'll tailor an itinerary just for you, based on your and your family's specific interests.

Another option is to join a group for a guided tour. These group tours pick you up at your hotel and are led by multilingual tour guides who speak English and at least one other language.

The Old City ½ Day tour leads you through the Old City’s main highlights, after offering you a panoramic view of the area.

The Jewish Heritage One-Day tour takes you through the Old City in the morning and includes an afternoon visit to Meah Shearim, Yad Vashem and Mt. Herzl.

Jerusalem Old and New, on the other hand, hits the main Christian and Jewish attractions in the Old City and then spends an intense afternoon at Yad Vashem.

In addition to these, you can also choose from a variety of other excursions, such as this one-day joint tour of Jerusalem and Bethlehem or a one-day excursion that includes both the Old City and a dip at a the Dead Sea Spa.

If you're in the mood for something different, you can explore the city's panoramic views by Segway or experience 3,000 years of history through the Tower of David's famed Sound and Light Show (book your tickets for the Sound and Light Show here).

Click here for a full listing of Jerusalem tours.

Jerusalem mp3: Our Favorite Do-It-Yourself Tours

Our favorite way of touring the Old City (and the cheapest, too) is to download the relevant tours from the Jerusalem Municipality website. They offer free mp3 downloads for about a dozen Jerusalem tours.

The audio quality of the files is very good and the information is provided by Yad Ben Zvi, the most prestigious Israeli institution for Jerusalem studies.

The tours will take your through the Armenian quarter, the Jewish Quarter, the Western Wall, near the Dome of the Rock, along the Via Dolorosa, to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Room of the Last Supper, Dormition Abbey and King David’s Tomb.

We've figured out how best to combine the tours into a one-day walking tour that covers most of the Old City in a time-efficient circuit. Follow our detailed instructions for downloading and using the Jerusalem mp3 tours. Otherwise, you’ll finish one tour at the opposite end of the city from where you want to start the next one.

These are my favorite recommendations if you've only got one day to spend in Jerusalem. But what about your's?

What if you only had one day here?

Your Favorite One-Day Jerusalem Tours
What Would You Do?

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