Israel in recent years has become a travel destination of choice for a number of Vineyarders, Jewish and Christian alike. I am among them and am recently back from Jerusalem. As Passover and Easter arrive, I have been recalling that ancient city’s holy sites. In any season Old Jerusalem on its hilltop is a city of spirituality and beauty, but at this holiday time it is especially so.

Although there are political and social tensions in Israel these days, you tend to forget them once inside Jerusalem’s ancient wall and gates. The three-mile long gold stone wall that surrounds the old city’s winding alleys and spacious overlooks was built by the Ottoman emperor, Suleiman the Magnificent, in the 16th century. Eight gates lead into it. All but one — the Golden Gate — are in daily pedestrian use, and cars may enter through two. Old Jerusalem, however, is a city for walking and looking, for visiting churches and synagogues and museums, for admiring the handcrafts in shops, not for driving. The wall’s closed gate is the Golden Gate that will not open until the Messiah enters through it, according to those who believe the Messiah is still to come.

I stayed just inside the Jaffa Gate at the Christ Church Guest House, the site also of an 1849 Anglican church that was the first Protestant church built in the Middle East. The Jaffa Gate offered easy access between Old and New Jerusalem, and I was eager to see both.

Inside the Jaffa Gate in Old Jerusalem, I watched artist-shopkeepers in the Armenian Quarter painting religious scenes on tiles and bowls and cups. I descended the alleyway steps of the souk where eager shopkeepers urged me to buy leather hassocks and silk slippers, olive wood Nativity scenes, scarves and toy camels — always at a starting price that was high, but got lower and lower as I turned to go.

The souk led me to the Christian Quarter and along the Via Dolorosa that Christ is said to have taken on his way to the cross. At the end of the Via Dolorosa is the immense, dark Church of the Holy Sepulchre built by the Crusaders in the 12th century. It marks the spot where today’s Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believe the crucifixion and Christ’s burial occurred and where the stone is said to be that was rolled away from Christ’s tomb. But there are those who insist that in the Hebrew tradition, Christ would have been buried outside the city walls. So, later, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I went, too, to the Garden Tomb outside the walls where Protestants believe Christ was buried and rose from the dead.

Also outside the walls at the foot of the Mount of Olives is where Judas is said to have betrayed Christ, and there inside the Church of All Nations is the rock where Christians believe Jesus last prayed before his betrayal.

On my recent visit, I arrived in Old Jerusalem shortly before dusk and found my way first to the Western Wall that is Jerusalem’s most sacred Jewish site. It was built in 20 B.C. to support the First Temple that Solomon had constructed on the Temple Mount. It was on the Temple Mount that Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Jews from all over the world come to the Western Wall to pray and to leave their written prayers in its cracks. The evening I was there was a haunting evening. Below me, Orthodox Jews in long black coats and boad-brimmed black hats were praying for the health of a beloved rabbi.

The following morning, I was there again to see in the distance the golden Dome of the Rock that rises on the Temple Mount. Built between 69 and 72 A.D., it is the oldest Muslem monument in the world. Like the Church of All Nations and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it sits above a rock — the one on which Mohammed, Muslims say, ascended to heaven. Though in years past, with its beautiful interior green and gold mosaics, it has been open to all, it is now open only to those of the Muslem faith. Nearby is the black-domed Al Aqua Mosque originally built in the 12th century, but like so many Jerusalem holy places, destroyed and rebuilt.

On this visit there was much that I missed — the Yad Veshem Memorial commemorating those who died in the Holocaust, the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, the Israeli Museum and the Shrine of the Book where the Dead Sea Scrolls are on display. I had seen them all before, but as all Vineyard visitors to this holy city have found out, a weeklong stay in any season is simply not enough.