In the late 1950s, when Teddy Kollek, the future mayor of Jerusalem, first suggested founding a national encyclopedic museum little more than a decade after Israel won its independence, many thought the idea pure folly.

Passing through the Dung Gate on the south end of Jerusalem’s Old City walls, visitors walk down a Herodian street built 2,000 years ago and get a breathtaking view of an archaeological park overlooking the Temple Mount, the site of the Second Temple (destroyed in 70 A.D.) where the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques now stand.