Destruction of Jerusalem (April–September AD 70)

The siege began during Passover, when pilgrims were in the city. The Romans took two walls, surrounded the city with a wall of their own and took the Antonia fortress. The Temple burned in August, the upper city fell in September. Josephus gives 1,100,000 victims, Tacitus 600,000 besieged; present-day estimates of the city’s population are many times lower.