Arch of Titus

A 1st-century triumphal arch commemorating Emperor Titus's brutal sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD, in which Roman forces destroyed the Second Temple. The inner reliefs are extraordinary: one panel shows Roman soldiers carrying off the menorah, silver trumpets, and Table of Showbread from the Temple — the most important visual record of Jewish ceremonial objects in antiquity. For centuries, observant Jews refused to walk under the arch; that tradition was reversed only in 1948 with the founding of the State of Israel.