The City of David (Hebrew: (, Ir David; literal translation to, Madina Dawud, common Arabic name: Wadi Hilweh, وادي حلوه) is an Israeli settlement and the archaeological site which is speculated to compose the original urban core of ancient Jerusalem. First suggested in 1920, the name was used officially from the 1970s, following the capture of East Jerusalem by Israel, but today the name is increasingly questioned in the archaeological academic community. In 1997 management of the park was taken over by Ir David Foundation. Although it is located within the Jerusalem Municipality, it is considered a settlement, having been built on land in the West Bank that was occupied by and annexed to Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War and 1980 Jerusalem Law. The international community regards Israeli settlements illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this. It is best known for its Iron Age structures attributed to Judean kings, and it also contains older Canaanite infrastructure dated to the Middle Bronze Age.
The site is now located under the Arab neighborhood of Wadi Hilweh, and extends down from the southern city walls of Jerusalem's Old City. The remains at the site include several water tunnels, one of which was built by King Hezekiah and still carries water, several pools including the Pool of Siloam known from the Old and New Testaments, and here or at the adjacent Ophel scholars expect to find, or claim to have found, the remains of the Acra, a fortress built by Antiochus Epiphanes to subdue those Jerusalemites who were opposed to Hellenisation. City of David archaeologist Eilat Mazar believes that a so-called Large Stone Structure she has discovered at the upper area of the site and tentatively dated to the tenth to ninth century BC, may be the palace of King David. Not far from that excavation area a number of bullae (seal impressions) were unearthed, bearing the names of Yehucal son of Shelemiah and Gedaliah son of Pashhur, two officials mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.
The area is one of the most intensively excavated sites in the Holy Land.
The debate within biblical archaeology over the location of the City of David began in the late 19th century with the excavations of Charles Warren and Hermann Guthe on the hill southeast of the Old City. The 1909–11 work of Louis-Hugues Vincent and Montagu Brownlow Parker identified the earliest known settlement traces in the Jerusalem region, suggesting the area was an ancient core of settlement in Jerusalem dating back to the Bronze Age. It is on a narrow ridge running south from the Temple Mount in the predominantly Arab neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem. It is thought to have been a walled city in the Bronze Age which enjoyed the defensive advantages of its position by the Tyropoeon Valley to its west, by the Hinnom Valley to the south, and the Kidron Valley on the east. In the pre-Israelite period, the area is thought to have been separated from the site of the later Temple Mount by the Ophel, an uninhabited area which became the seat of government under Israelite rule. During the reign of Hezekiah, the walls of the city were expanded westward, enclosing a previously unwalled suburb in the area known today as the Western Hill of the Old City, west of the Temple Mount.
The City of David is highly controversial in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. It is located in Wadi Hilweh, on the western ridge of the predominately Arab neighborhood of Silwan. Jews constitute the majority of the population. In October 2014, Uri Ariel, politician from The Jewish Home party and at that time Israeli Minister of Housing and Construction, caused controversy when he suggested he was considering taking up residence in the area. The construction of the 16,000 m2 Kedem Compound, approved in April 2014, was denounced by UNESCO in October 2016.