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The Western Wall (Hebrew: הכותל המערבי, translit.: HaKotel HaMa'aravi), or simply The Kotel, is a retaining wall in Jerusalem that dates from the time of the Jewish Second Temple. It is sometimes referred to as the Wailing Wall, or as the al-Buraq Wall, in a mix of English and Arabic. The Temple was the most sacred building in Judaism. Herod the Great built vast retaining walls around Mount Moriah, expanding the small, quasi-natural plateau on which the First and Second Temples stood into the wide open spaces of the Temple Mount seen today.

In recent centuries, Jews were allowed little or no access to the site, such as when Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) ruled over it for 400 years (1515-1917), followed by the British Mandate of Palestine (1917-1948) and the Jordanian rule of Jerusalem (1948-1967). Only when the Israel Defense Forces won a victory in the 1967 Six Day War were Jews finally able to gain free access to the site.

The First Temple or Solomon's Temple was built in the 10th century BC. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC, the Second Temple was destroyed by the Roman Empire in AD 70 as a result of the First Jewish-Roman War. Each Temple stood for a period of about four centuries.

According to Judaism's religious texts, when the legions of Titus destroyed the Temple, only a part of an outer court-yard "western wall" remained standing. Jewish texts teach that Titus left it as a bitter reminder to the Jews that Rome had vanquished Judea. The Jews, however, attributed it to a promise made by God that some part of the holy Temple would be left standing as a sign of God's unbroken bond with the Jewish people in spite of the catastrophes which had befallen them.

The site is also holy to Muslims who believe Solomon to be a prophet. Muslims believe that Muhammad made a spiritual journey to Jerusalem on a winged horse, al-Buraq, in 620 AD. While there, he tethered the horse to a wall, which some Muslims believe to be the Western wall. Hence the Arabic name for the wall is the al-Buraq Wall. Due to the holiness of the site in Islam, in 687 AD Muslims built the Dome of the Rock and the nearby Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, encompassed by the wall.