ABSTRACT
A traveller arriving for the first time at Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem in the 1850s, after a dusty ride up into the hills from the coastal plain, was frequently accosted by representatives of the Mediterranean Hotel and its principal rival the Melita Hotel. Carel Willem Meredith van de Velde, on reaching Jerusalem in 1852, was pounced upon by ‘different natives, well-dressed, and speaking a medley of English, French and Italian, [and they] fell upon me with hotel cards …’. 1 The American traveller and writer William Cowper Prime, in 1856, describes his annoyance at being badgered by such hotel representatives: ‘As we approached the north-ernmost corner of the [Old City] wall we met a sallying party of Jerusalem hotel-keepers, who were as vociferous in their recommendations of their various inns as New York cab-drivers’. 2 Although the Melita Hotel had been established some eight years earlier, the Mediterranean Hotel was regarded by many as the better (and more expensive) hotel of the two. The Mediterranean Hotel, as we shall see, had a chequered history, moving from location to location during the course of the nineteenth century. In this chapter, we concentrate on the first location of the hotel, situated not far from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, between 1849 and 1866.
