Jerusalem has undergone more radical change over the course of the last century than in the entire preceding millennium. No part of Jerusalem is a more revelatory microcosm of that succession of sea changes than Mamilla, the neighborhood wedged against the walls of the Old City between Jaffa Gate, Yemin Moshe and Rechavia.

Mamilla was founded in the late 19th century to house the overflow population from the increasingly crowded Old City, taken over and redesigned by the British during the Mandatory Era, leveled by constant Jordanian shelling during the nearly 20 years it lay on the seam line between Israeli and Jordanian Jerusalem between the War of Independence and the Six Day War, and controversially repurposed as a shopping and lodging district.

The construction of the new Mamilla has gone on in fits and starts for nearly the past 40 years, beset by poor planning, public discontent, architectural woes, communication breakdowns and other various calamities, but in 2007 the Mamilla mall finally opened, joining the already finished David Citadel hotel and the very expensive and very empty David's Village, a neighborhood of luxury apartments owned almost entirely by absentee tenants who visit for only a few days a year.

With the mall now open, visitors can drop serious money at upscale clothing boutiques, perfumeries and drink coffee all within sight of the walls of the Old City, and thanks to a rare bit of intelligent urban planning on the Jerusalem Municipality's part, there's even parking.