The Jerusalem wall that became its makers' grave

Everyone comes through Jaffa Gate under those great honey coloured walls and heads for the markets. Hardly anyone stops at the little iron railing just inside, where two worn stone graves lie side by side.

The story goes that they belong to the two architects Suleiman the Magnificent hired to raise these walls between 1537 and 1541. When the sultan saw the finished circuit, he found they had left Mount Zion, with the tomb of King David and the room of the Last Supper, standing outside the stone. Legend says he had them executed for the error, and then, because the walls were so beautiful, had them buried with honour inside the very gate they had built. Historians will tell you the route really followed the hills and the size of the city, and that the graves are probably a couple of Ottoman notables, but the tale has outlived every correction.

I painted the walls in watercolour and ink, warm Jerusalem stone glowing against a high pale sky, and the whole time I kept thinking about those two men, remembered for a line drawn slightly wrong, resting for ever inside the one thing they got magnificently right. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here:  Old City of Jerusalem, Israel · Travel Poster