Updates, Live: Dan Romascanu - Images from Jerusalem, June 2009

the entry into Jerusalem on Highway 1, the new bridge designed by Calatrava can be seen in the background

a villa in the Talbyeh neighborhood which started as a well-off Arab area in the 1930s to become later a mixed neighborhood and a mostly Jewish are after 1948. The residence was inhabited in the 1940s by the mukhtar (head) of the Jewish community and later in the 50s and 60s by a a famous judge as the Israeli Supreme Court

typical house in the German Colony, a neighborhood founded by German settlers soon after 1870, at a time when quite a number of German Christians settled in the Holy Land, founding similar colonies in Haifa, Yaffo and the place that later became part of Tel Aviv. To a large degree German settlement in the area ends during the second world war at a time when the German Templars who were part of the community openly allied themselves with the Nazi regime leading to their internment as hostile aliens and then deportation by the British

a statue in the garden of the Burmese Sisters monastery - they are not really Burmese but German. The monastery exists since the time of the German Colony, and as other religious institutions in this area of Jerusalem it is well hidden behind high fences, protecting a monastic life which is both interesting and original in the context of the city's history and present

the building of the St. Charles Hospice - we were not allowed access in the church or the rest of the building, we could just admired it from the garden

prayer time in the church of the St. Claire monastery. The Clarisse nuns presence in Jerusalem dates to the end of the 19th century. They live in almost complete isolation from the outer world. In the last few years the monastery is being taken over by Italian nuns, and Italian becomes the official language, after the monastery was populated for more than a century by nuns coming mostly from France. This reflects changes in the Catholic church and the Clarisse order

a Franciscan monk and a Clarisse nun in yard of the St. Claire monastery

such an intersection can exists only in Jerusalem - it's Emek Rafaim (Valley of Ghosts) street with Lloyd George stret, under the sign of St. Paul (well, sort of)