Downtown Triangle (Jerusalem)

The Downtown Triangle (Hebrew: המשולש‎‎, Ha-Meshulash, lit. "The Triangle") is a central commercial and entertainment district in Jerusalem, Israel. Measuring 29,000 square metres (310,000 sq ft), the area is bounded by Jaffa Road on the north, King George Street on the west, and Ben Yehuda Street on the southeast. Its vertices are the intersections of Jaffa Road and King George Street, King George and Ben Yehuda Streets, and Ben Yehuda Street and Jaffa Road (the latter known as Zion Square).

From the mid-1940s through the 1960s, the Triangle was the commercial and cultural heart of Jerusalem, with many upscale shops and restaurants operated by German-Jewish immigrant businessmen that appealed to an affluent clientele. Following the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967 and the expansion of the city away from the downtown core, the commercial viability of the Triangle declined. The area was revitalized by the conversion of Ben Yehuda Street and the interior streets of the Triangle to an open-air pedestrian mall in 1982. Over the next two decades, outdoor cafes and souvenir shops moved in, cementing the reputation of the Triangle as a popular shopping and entertainment venue for tourists and young Israelis.

Before the British Mandatory government took over in 1917, the main commercial district in Jerusalem was in the Old City. With an eye to the continuing development of new neighborhoods outside the Old City Walls, the British drew up a master town plan that called for the establishment of two commercial hubs in the New City. The first commercial district to be built was the Downtown Triangle, although it was intended to play a secondary role to the other planned commercial district in the Mamilla area, which was closer to the Old City. However, the Mamilla development did not garner as much interest as the Triangle.

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