Aelia Capitolina

Aelia Capitolina was the Roman colonial city founded by Emperor Hadrian around 135 CE over the ruins of Jerusalem, which Titus had razed in 70 CE. Its establishment followed the brutal suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, and Hadrian explicitly barred Jews from entering under penalty of death, renaming the province Syria Palaestina to erase its Jewish associations. The city was laid out on a classic Roman grid, with a Cardo Maximus and Decumanus as its main axes — a street plan whose outline survives in the alleyways of Jerusalem's Old City to this day. Capitoline temples replaced the destroyed Jewish sanctuary on the Temple Mount. No freestanding ruins of Aelia Capitolina exist above ground; the colony is experienced as an archaeological stratum beneath the city, legible in street alignments, foundation walls, and fragments of column drums embedded in later construction.