Mamilla shopping mall
© Eitan Simanor
"Project Mamilla": Conservation or Urban Megalomania?
"Project Mamilla" is a 10 hectares ambitious urban development including luxury housing, hotels and offices as well as huge underground parking lots and a tourist promenade combined with a shopping mall leading to the Old City through a steep fly of 22 stairs.
Most buildings of the original Mamilla neighborhood have been destroyed, giving way to massive modern structures with neo-archaic arches as the main design feature. A couple of historical warehouses have been dismantled and put back together in different locations, as part of the project, allowing the entrepreneurs to claim a large conservation effort as part of this rather gigantic project.
"A unique project overlooking the Old City" was the advertising slogan for the project, situated near Jaffa gate, on what used to be the seam line between West and East Jerusalem (from 1949 till 1967). Yet for a glimpse of the Old City walls from Mamilla shopping mall one would have to stand on the very edge of a top terrace...
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