Jerusalem: Al Buraq Wall-Western Wall

When the groups of Orthodox Jews make their way through today's narrow streets of the Old City to pray at the Wall, they are following a variation of a tradition almost 3,000 years old. In the chaotic days of 1,000 BC the Jewish tribes of Israel were split between the southern confederation of Judah based in Hebron, and the northern confederation of Israel based in Nablus. These two Jewish groups were divided by the pagan city of Jerusalem which was independent under its Jebusite rulers.  King David reunited Israel and Judah but found it impossible to turn them into one nation until he conquered Jerusalem and established it as the new capital of the united Judah and Israel.
 King Solomon
Under David's son Solomon the new kingdom took advantage of the coincidence of internal weakness in both regional superpowers of Assyria and Egypt, allowing Solomon to build both his legendary kingdom and an extraordinarily luxurious temple in Jerusalem in 950 BC which lasted for almost 400 years till the Babylonians demolished it and took the Jews into exile.
The Second Temple was built around 516 BC and despite failing into disrepair it survived till the Romans conquered Jerusalem and appointed the wealthy Herod the Great as their King of the Jews in 37 BC. Herod rebuilt the temple into the largest and most sumptuous of them all, which was finished in 20 BC but only lasted till the Romans utterly destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD as they put down the final Jewish rebellion.
Following this disaster the Jews moved away from Jerusalem and slowly started their rabbinic tradition which continues to this day under which they focus their religion in the synagogues, abandoning the priestly tradition based on the Temple.
Herodian stones
Today the sole remaining elements of Herod's vast building programme are the huge blocks of Jerusalem stone which were the foundations of the vast precinct upon which Herod built the Third Temple. The south west corner of the precinct has acquired a particular Jewish sanctity over the years where the Jews gather to pray at what they call the Kotel and the Muslims call Al Buraq Wall, while English speakers now use the term Western Wall instead of the more pejorative Wailing Wall.
The Wall may have been a site of Jewish veneration for centuries, but in the mid-1800s it became much more popular as the incoming Jews sought a larger presence in Jerusalem.
The homes and buildings of the Maghrebi Quarter used to go almost right up to this section of the Wall leaving very little space around it. During the early 1900s it was a major Zionist aspiration to have more access to the Wall, but this was eventually denied by the turbulent politics of the 1948 war when the Old City remained in Arab hands and Israeli territory was limited to Western Jerusalem.
1967
Everything changed in 1967 when the Israelis conquered East Jerusalem and the West Bank, along with the Golan Heights and Gaza. They took control of the Old City and proceeded to send in the bulldozers to remove hundreds of homes to make the open plaza that is now in front of the Wall. They have also tunneled under the Muslim Quarter to follow the Western Wall further north from the traditional areas for prayer in the exposed area at its southern end. These illegal and highly controversial tunnels are in part designed to offer more Wall for Jewish prayer but are also a rough attempt at archaeology in what would have been the deep Central Valley next to the site of the former temple on Mounts Ophel and Moria.