In 1969, Avigad was invited to undertake the excavation of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, devastated by the 1948 war and its aftermath. Among the finds were what was believed to be the earliest depiction of the "menorah" that once burned in the Second Temple, cut into a wall plastered 2,200 years ago, and the Burnt House, the remnant of a building destroyed when Titus, the future Roman Emperor, repressed the Jewish Revolt against Roman rule. This was the first physical or archaeological evidence for the destruction described in the work of Flavius Josephus. The dig also unearthed lavish villas belonging to the Herodian upper classes, remains of the Byzantine Nea (new) Church and Jerusalem's Cardo, a fifth-century -wide road connecting the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Nea Church. Among the most exciting finds was the remnants of the Broad Wall twice mentioned in the "Book of Nehemiah". Built to defend Jerusalem during the reign of King Hezekiah in the late 8th century BCE, there remains an stretch of wall, thick, rising from bedrock west of the Temple Mount. Nearby, Avigad also unearthed the Israelite Tower, a remnant of Jerusalem's Iron Age fortifications attesting to the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.