Jerusalem Hotel: A Journey into History, Heritage, and Arabic Poetry Just Steps from Damascus Gate

A mere two-minute walk from Damascus Gate takes visitors to the Jerusalem Hotel, where their gaze is torn between the grandeur of one of the Old City’s most majestic ancient gates and the unique architecture of the hotel itself, both inside and out.

Located on ‘Antara ibn Shaddad Street, this hotel was built as a palace for the Sharaf family in 1890 during the Ottoman era. Stepping through the hotel’s small initially inconspicuous green gate, guests are instantly transported from the noise of bustling vehicles and pedestrian chatter outside into the quiet beauty of the historical heritage within.

Visitors first pass through a small front garden before reaching the handcrafted wooden inner gate. In this garden, hotel owner Raed Saadeh has placed two massive millstones that reflect his family heritage. These stones, originally from Birzeit, a town north of Ramallah, were once used to crush olives and extract oil in the family’s historic olive press.1

Jerusalem Story recently met with Raed to ask him about his family’s background, their Christian roots, and how they came to settle in Jerusalem, eventually becoming the owners of one of the city’s most captivating hotels.

Raed shared the life story of his father, Sami Saadeh, which was riddled with obstacles and challenges. Born in Birzeit in 1910, Sami moved to Haifa in the early 1930s to pursue a career in teaching English. As Raed explained, “He had memorized the dictionary by heart, and his mastery of the language was exceptional, which qualified him to become a teacher at the time.”

However, Sami’s teaching career was short-lived, and he soon found himself working at the Iraqi Oil Company in Haifa, where he quickly rose to become the head of security. During his time in the city, Sami met Loris Sharbin, a young woman from Haifa, who would become his first wife and the mother of his four children.

“In late 1947, the executives at the oil company sensed changes unfolding in the region, so the management ordered the relocation of its employees from Haifa to Beirut. My father had to move his wife and my four siblings, but he remained in Haifa as he was the security officer,” Raed said.

As conditions worsened in 1948, Sami was expelled from his home in the city center and was forcibly moved to a four-room apartment on Abbas Street in Haifa.

He had barely recovered from the shock of displacement when he was struck by yet another devastating event. One day, he returned home from work to find the apartment door broken, with an Israeli soldier and his wife settled inside one of the rooms, claiming the house belonged to them.

Sami filed complaints with several authorities, including the Custodian of Absentee Property, who ordered that both he and the soldier remain in the house, with Sami continuing to pay rent to the department.

But the pain did not end there. Over time, the soldier’s parents occupied a second room in the house, then a third, until Sami was ultimately expelled from the apartment. He then decided to relocate to Beirut.

He did not stay there long. He longed to return to his homeland, but his wife refused to accompany him. He left Beirut alone and settled in the Jordanian capital, Amman, in 1951. In early 1960, he met the seamstress Julia al-Shaer, who hails from the Palestinian Christian town of Beit Jala, south of Jerusalem. Fate brought them together when he needed a new suit tailored. They married.

Shortly after their marriage, Sami saw a newspaper advertisement for a hotel for sale in Jerusalem. His wife encouraged him to buy it, and he did.

The Saadeh family purchased the two-story building, which spans 200 square meters, along with a small basement and a 100-square-meter garden. It had quite the history.

Raed, the hotel’s current owner, is Sami’s son from his second marriage. Raed gave Jerusalem Story a summary of the building’s history. It was built on the ruins of a fourth-century Byzantine church, believed to be the Church of Saint Stephen. The church was commissioned by a woman of Greek origin named Eudocia.

Dominican monks, who lived near the building, recounted that the Ottoman army took control of it in 1915, using it as a recruitment center for young men during World War I. After the Ottoman defeat and the beginning of the Colonial British Mandate in Palestine, the building was converted into a school.

“My aunt’s husband studied at that school, arriving daily from the Qatamon neighborhood in the western part of the city. The students there studied in German.”

After 1948, when Israel seized and annexed the majority of the city, emptied it of Palestinians, and transformed it into Jewish West Jerusalem, the building fell within the eastern area controlled by Jordan, located along the border established between the 1948 and 1967 lines. At that time, the Palestinian Khalaf family purchased the building and transformed it into a hotel. Later, the Saadeh family acquired it, and it continues to operate as a hotel to this day.

The Khalaf family originally named their hotel Khalaf Jerusalem, but when the Saadeh family took over, they renamed it the Jerusalem Hotel.

Because of its location in the border area between Israel and Jordan, the hotel was not spared from attacks. Raed recounts an incident relayed by his parents that dates back to 1967, when a group of young men gathered in the hotel’s backyard and threw stones at the Israeli army. In response, the Israeli forces sent a plane to neutralize them, firing shells that burned and damaged the eastern section of the hotel.

“My father repaired the burned and damaged areas, making sure to preserve the building’s original elements. He remained diligent about all its contents and features until he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1980, and we then had to seek the help of a hospitality service company to manage the place.”

That company made a huge mistake, in Raed’s opinion, when it decided to modernize the hotel. Workers began to erase its authentic Jerusalem features. This phase lasted only nine years. Two years after his father’s death, after completing his university education in the United States in 1989, Raed returned at his mother’s request. He took charge of the hotel, investing in it and restoring its original features and elements. The restoration was completed by 1990, just two months before the outbreak of the Gulf War in January 1991.

At the mention of the First Gulf War, Raed began recounting all the wars and popular uprisings that have dealt a fatal blow to the tourism sector in Jerusalem over the decades. The First and Second Gulf Wars, the First and Second Intifadas, the Gaza wars, the popular uprisings in Jerusalem, the wars on Lebanon, the construction of the Separation Wall, the coronavirus pandemic, and the current genocidal war on Gaza and Lebanon have all taken a toll on tourism and hotel bookings in Jerusalem, causing many hotels in the city to struggle or even close permanently.

Raed took Jerusalem Story on a tour of the 14-room hotel. At the entrance, one’s attention gravitates to a verse by the 10th-century poet Abu al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, hand-carved on the wooden door: “A land where you can find whatever you desire / Only the generous ones are not found there.”

With this beautiful verse and Raed’s calm smile, we were ushered into the serene hotel, where Palestinian antiquities adorn every corner. Traditional embroidered dresses, stone and pottery artifacts, copper vessels, antique wooden chairs (some made of bamboo), old farming tools, and many other items take every Palestinian who steps foot into the place back to the simple yet elegant life of their ancestors.

“I bought some of the artifacts, while others were gifted to me by friends and other Palestinian families. I don’t have a lot of money to buy everything I love. When I have the money, I buy new pieces, and when I don’t, I stop buying,” he said with a laugh.

Because the hotel is located on a street named after a poet—‘Antara ibn Shaddad Street—each room features verses of his poetry, and outside of each room there is a line of poetry by al-Mutanabbi.

The hotel’s 14 rooms are divided into four sections, all graced by high ceilings, arched windows, ancient stones, antiques, and furniture inspired by the culture and traditions of Jerusalem. The room furniture was designed specifically for the hotel in the Egyptian city of Damietta. According to Raed, the longer it ages, the more beautiful and valuable it becomes.

Each room is named after a woman who played a role in the architectural identity of the city. This idea was inspired by the story of Eudocia, who ordered the construction of the church on whose ruins the hotel was built.

The rooms located in the Mamluk-Ottoman salon are named after Khaski Sultan, Tanshak al-Muzaffariyya, Isfahan Khatun, Turkan Khatun, and Misr Khatun. The rooms in the Crusader salon are named Melisende, Sibylla, and Eleanor, while the rooms in the Byzantine-Roman salon are named Eudocia, Pomenea, Helena, Melania the grandmother, Melania the granddaughter, and Salome Alexandra. The room in the Palestinian salon bears the name of Jerusalem’s famous daughter Hind al-Husseini.

“I chose names for the rooms from all eras to tell the story of Jerusalem from another angle; I want to convey that it is an ancient city that has witnessed many civilizations,” Raed shares.