The Western Wall is an exposed portion of the retaining system that enlarged Jerusalem's Temple Mount under Herod the Great. Herod began his ambitious reconstruction around 20 or 19 BCE, enclosing a broader platform with massive courses of carefully fitted limestone. The wall did not belong to the Temple sanctuary itself; it supported the western edge of the esplanade on which the Second Temple complex stood. Its enormous lower blocks, some extending far below the present plaza, demonstrate the engineering and political scale of Herod's royal building program.

Roman forces destroyed the Temple in 70 CE after suppressing the Jewish revolt. Sections of the surrounding platform walls survived, and the mount later acquired new religious meanings under Roman, Byzantine, early Islamic, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman rule. Muslims identify the western section as al-Buraq Wall, associating it with the Prophet Muhammad's Night Journey, while the sanctuary above contains the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque. Jewish traditions increasingly treated the surviving wall as a place of mourning, prayer, and proximity to the former Temple's sacred center.

Evidence for Jewish prayer near the wall extends through medieval and early modern accounts, although access, precise locations, and customs changed over time. Under Ottoman government the narrow lane beside the stones lay within the Mughrabi, or Moroccan, Quarter, founded for North African Muslims. Worshippers brought benches, lamps, screens, and written petitions, sometimes prompting official restrictions intended to preserve an established pattern of use. The familiar practice of placing notes between the stones developed within this long devotional history, as did the name Kotel, meaning simply the Wall in Hebrew.

During the British Mandate, competing national movements turned small changes at the prayer site into tests of sovereignty. Disputes over screens, seating, noise, and ownership contributed to the violence of 1929, in which Jewish and Arab communities across Palestine suffered deadly attacks. An international commission in 1930 confirmed Muslim ownership of the wall and pavement while recognizing Jewish access for worship under regulated conditions. After the 1948 war, Jordan controlled the Old City and Jewish residents were unable to reach the wall, deepening its role as a symbol of loss and longing.

Israeli forces captured East Jerusalem in June 1967. Within days, Israeli authorities demolished the Mughrabi Quarter and displaced its residents to create the broad prayer plaza seen today. The change enabled mass gatherings and transformed the wall from a confined neighborhood shrine into a major national ceremonial space, but it also erased a centuries-old community. Israeli religious authorities established separate men's and women's sections. Archaeological excavation exposed tunnels and adjacent structures, expanding knowledge of the Herodian platform while generating continuing disputes over access, interpretation, and effects near Islamic holy places.

The Western Wall now serves daily worshippers, pilgrims, tourists, state ceremonies, and military commemorations. Debates over women's prayer groups, non-Orthodox worship, archaeology, policing, and control show that its meaning is neither singular nor settled. Israel administers the plaza, while Palestinians and much of the international community regard East Jerusalem as occupied territory whose final status remains unresolved. The site's history requires holding several truths together: it is a surviving work of Herodian engineering, Judaism's most prominent accessible prayer place, part of a sacred Islamic landscape, and a modern space created through both devotion and displacement.