Through this gate, the Israeli paratroopers broke into the Old City of Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967.
This is the only open gate in the eastern wall, and one of the original gates of the sixteenth-century wall encompassing the Old City.
It was called by many names in the past: Gate of the Tribes, Bad Sitt Maryam (Lady Mary's Gate) by the Arabs, Gate of Jehoshaphat, and St. Stephen's Gate (by the Eastern Church) after St. Stephen, who is believed to have been martyred nearby.
From the mid-nineteenth century the Jews called it the Lion's Gate after the two pairs of flanking carved lions (actually, leopards) in its facade – the symbol of the Mamluk sultan Baybars, who conquered Israel in 1260.
