Paul Calvert spoke with Dudi Mevorach from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, about the history of the model of Jerusalem in the late Second Temple period, and how it's changed over the years in response to archaeological excavations.

Dudi: It is amazing and the answer is we had to cut it into a 1000 squares. We cut it with a diamond saw and built the topography here at the museum grounds.

The model is built according to the right direction and to the topography of Jerusalem.

There were some surprises with the numbers here. It was moved in 2006. It is the model of Jerusalem in 66 and it took 66 days to move it and open it in 2006.

It's really a work of art. This model is not only researched, but also a work of art built at the grounds. It enables people that come to see Jerusalem, to see something that is very difficult usually to grasp as you walk through the streets of Jerusalem; to see sites, because they are twined into modern buildings. It is very difficult to get the big picture, but here you get a bird's eye view of the whole city and how it is spread and developed, and the monuments within it. Most of the public monuments are built by Herod the Great.

It's a great tour either before you go to the sites, or after you return from them to understand the bigger picture of Jerusalem.

Paul: How long did it take to build this?

Dudi: It took five years originally to build it. It was all private investment. It was completed in 1966, a year before the Six Day War that enabled people to go to the Old City and see the sites.

It is still a huge attraction. It has been for the last 60 years, for all tourists and guides and also for research purposes, because it enables us as researchers to look at the relation between the sites; to see the city plan and to understand things that would be very hard to understand otherwise.

Paul: It must be amazing for you to see this every morning.

Dudi: It really is amazing. The nice thing at the museum is that many of the finds and exhibits that are in the galleries, relate directly to sites that you see in the model. So you can correlate and the model gives context to the exhibition in the galleries of the museum.

Paul: So this would be the Temple that Jesus saw wouldn't it?

Dudi: Yes this would definitely be it. This is exactly the city that Jesus has seen and walked through its streets.

This is the Temple Mount where we know of all His actions. You can see at a first glance at the city that it looks like every other Hellenistic Roman city in the region, but a second glance shows you that there is only one Temple for one God, which is a huge difference from all the other Roman cities.

Also there are no sculptures because doing images in Judaism of the Second Temple period is totally prohibited.