The Upper City was the neighborhood of the rich, with large, elaborate dwellings inhabited by the families of the high priests and of the local aristocracy. Here were the palaces of the Hasmonean kings, of King Herod and of the High Priest Caiaphas (who is mentioned in the New Testament). Here, Jesus was arrested and held for a night before he was handed over to the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, for sentencing. (Matthew 26: 57-75; Luke 22:54-71, 23:1) According to Christian tradition, the palace of the High Priest Caiaphas stood on Mt. Zion, which today is outside the Old City wall, to the south. The contemporary Jewish historian and native Jerusalemite, Josephus Flavius describe the walls, the towers and the elaborate palaces of the Upper City in detail. He was an eyewitness to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and he also describes the conquest of the Upper City, where the Roman soldiers plundered the palaces and elegant homes and burnt them to their foundations, on the 8th day of Elul in the year 70 CE, one month after the destruction of the Temple.

Caesar, finding it impracticable to reduce the upper city without earthworks, owing to the precipitous nature of the site, on the twentieth of the month Lous (Ab) apportioned the task among his forces. The conveyance of timber was, however, arduous, all the environs of the city to a distance of a hundred furlongs having, as I said, been stripped bare. The earthworks having now been completed after eighteen days' labor, on the seventh of the month Gorpiaeus (Elul) the Romans brought up the engines. Of the rebels, some already despairing of the city, retired from the ramparts to the citadel, others slunk down into the tunnels. Pouring into the alleys, sword in hand, they (the Romans) massacred indiscriminately all whom they met, and burnt the houses with all who had taken refuge within. Often in the course of their raids, on entering the houses for loot, they would find whole families dead and the rooms filled with the victims of the famine... Running everyone through who fell in their way, they choked the alleys with corpses and deluged the whole city with blood, insomuch that many of the fires were extinguished by the gory stream. Towards evening they ceased slaughtering, but when night fell the fire gained the mastery, and the dawn of the eighth day of the month of Gorpiaeus (Elul) broke upon Jerusalem in flames - a city which had suffered such calamities...The Romans now set fire to the outlying quarters of the town and razed the walls to the ground. Thus was Jerusalem taken in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, on the eighth of the month of Gorpiaeus. (20 September 70 AD) (War VI. 8-10)

From 1969 to 1982, when the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem was rebuilt, the Upper City of the Second Temple period became subject to comprehensive archeological investigation. Impressive remains of continuous settlement on the western hill were uncovered - from the end of the First Temple period (8th-7th centuries BC) to modern times. Remains of the dwellings of the Upper City, which had been buried for almost 1,900 years, were exposed. Houses and artifacts were preserved almost in their entirety, protected by a thick blanket of the debris of later occupation. The finds confirm very precisely the written evidence of Josephus Flavius and the fierceness of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Upper City.

Upon completion of the excavations, remains from the Upper City were preserved as museums, beneath the new buildings of the Jewish Quarter. Visitors may walk through the courtyards and the rooms of houses, in which the stone furniture and vessels used by the inhabitants 2,000 years ago stand intact. They provide a vivid record of the way of life that ended there in the year 70 AD.

Credit: http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il