 In the early centuries of the Common Era , after the Roman defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE , Jews were banned from Jerusalem . There is some evidence that Roman emperors in the 2nd and 3rd centuries did permit them to visit the city to worship on the Mount of Olives and sometimes on the Temple Mount itself . When the empire became Christian under Constantine I , they were given permission to enter the city once a year , on the ninth day of the month of Av , to lament the loss of the Temple at the wall . The Bordeaux Pilgrim , written in 333 CE , suggests that it was probably to the perforated stone or the Rock of Moriah , " to which the Jews come every year and anoint it , bewail themselves with groans , rend their garments , and so depart " . This was because an Imperial decree from Rome barred Jews from living in Jerusalem . Just once per year they were permitted to return and bitterly grieve about the fate of their people . Comparable accounts survive , including those by the Church Father , Gregory of Nazianzus and by Jerome in his commentary to Zephaniah written in 392 CE . In the 4th century , Christian sources reveal that the Jews encountered great difficulty in buying the right to pray near the Western Wall , at least on the 9th of Av . In 425 CE , the Jews of the Galilee wrote to Byzantine empress Aelia Eudocia seeking permission to pray by the ruins of the Temple . Permission was granted and they were officially permitted to resettle in Jerusalem . 
