Roofing in Palestine

Palestine contains Jericho, whose archaeological deposits reach back about 12,500 years, and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, whose restored timber-and-lead roof is a well-documented recent heritage roof project.

Climate and hazards

Palestine has hot, dry summers and a winter rainy season. The region is seismically active: steel connectors were added to the Nativity church's roof trusses for earthquake resistance.

Roofing history

Pre-Pottery Neolithic Jericho. At Tell es-Sultan, archaeological deposits go back to about 10,500 BC and record 29 phases of occupation. By the 9th-8th millennium BC the settlement was a sizeable permanent community protected by a monumental wall with a ditch and a tower, built around 8000 BC. Houses of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period were round and semi-subterranean, with stone foundations and mud-brick upper walls; how they were roofed are not well documented in published sources.

Byzantine and later. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem has a basilica roofed with timber trusses covered in lead sheet. The roof's last major repair before modern times was in 1480, in the Mamluk period.

Modern. Flat reinforced concrete roofs, as across the Levant, are standard in new buildings.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

Stone vaults and flat earth roofs are part of the shared Levantine tradition (see flat-roof and mud-roof).

Notable roofs

• Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem (UNESCO, inscribed 2012): placed on the danger list at inscription because of the building's poor state, with rain seeping in through the roof. Restoration began in 2013; the Italian firm Piacenti re-covered the roof with about 1,625 m² (17,500 sq ft) of new lead, replaced about 8% of the trusses with aged timber from Italy and added steel seismic connectors. The site was removed from the danger list in July 2019. See church-of-the-nativity-roof.
• Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan (UNESCO): Neolithic wall and tower.

Sources and gaps

Detailed climate data, Palestine-specific descriptions of vernacular roof construction, census data on main roofing materials, Palestine-specific data on rooftop solar water heaters, local roofing terms and information on modern materials, codes and industry were not found in published sources.