Arriving at "The Cardo" in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, we encounter a section of Byzantine Cardo, a Colonnade of western portico with the remains of shops hewn into bedrock. One shop was discovered intact with its arched entrance.
In Latin Cardo means "axis"; and with the Decamanus, it formed the main streets and focal axes of the typical Roman city plan. Such streets also existed in Roman Aelia Capitolina, the city of Jerusalem rebuilt by Hadrian. It was Constantine, who changed its name back to Jerusalem 200 years later.
The original Cardo in Jerusalem ran along the northern sector of the Roman City. It began from a square inside the city's main gate - today the Damascus gate - and crossed through the entire city to the south. In the middle of the square, was a high pillar; when the Moslems conquered Jerusalem in the 7th century the gate was renamed "Bab elAmud" (The Pillar Gate).
The gate, the square with the pillar, and the Cardo are depicted in detail on the colored mosaic map of Jerusalem, found in 1884 in a Byzantine church in Trans-Jordanian Medabah.
During the Byzantine era, the population increased in the city's southern sector - today's Jewish Quarter. It appears that Emperor Justinian (527 - 565 C.E.), wellknown for his construction works throughout the Byzantine Empire, built the extension of the Roman Cardo up to the southern city wall, and connected the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to the Néa Church he had built earlier.
Only a small section of Hadrian original northern Cardo has been uncovered.
 The southern section, built in the Byzantine period, was only discovered when archaeological excavations were carried out between 1975 - 1978, during the restoration of the Jewish Quarter.
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