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The siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE was the decisive event of the First Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire (66–73 CE). Roman forces led by Titus besieged Jerusalem, the Jewish capital and the revolt's main stronghold. After months of fighting, they breached the defenses, destroyed the Second Temple, and razed the city, killing, enslaving, or displacing much of its population. The city's fall marked the effective end of the revolt and a turning point in Jewish history.
In winter 69–70, following a respite in the revolt's suppression caused by a succession war in Rome, Titus led four legions and auxiliary forces, numbering at least 48,200 soldiers, back into Judaea. By spring, this army had encircled Jerusalem, whose population had swollen with refugees and Passover pilgrims. Inside the city, rival factions led by John of Gischala, Simon bar Giora and Eleazar ben Simon fought each other, destroying the city's food supplies and weakening its defenses. The factions eventually united and mounted fierce resistance, but the Romans breached the walls and drove the defenders into the Temple precincts.
In the month of Av (July/August), the Romans captured the Temple Mount and destroyed the Second Temple—an event commemorated annually in Judaism on Tisha B'Av. The rest of Jerusalem fell in the following weeks. The Romans systematically demolished most of the city. A year later, Titus and his father, Emperor Vespasian, celebrated their victory with a triumph in Rome, parading Temple spoils—including the menorah—alongside hundreds of captives. The victory was later commemorated in monuments such as the Arch of Titus and on the Judaea Capta coinage.
With sacrificial worship no longer possible, Judaism gradually reoriented around Torah study, acts of loving-kindness, and synagogue prayer, a development that culminated in Rabbinic Judaism. Some early Christians interpreted the destruction as a sign that God had turned away from the Jewish people, lending support to supersessionist theology. After the war, Legio X Fretensis established a permanent garrison on the ruins. Recalling the city's restoration after its destruction in 587/586 BCE, many Jews expected the Temple to be rebuilt. In 130, Emperor Hadrian re-founded Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, a Roman colony dedicated to Jupiter, paving the way for the last major Jewish rebellion: the Bar Kokhba Revolt.
General info from Wikipedia.org
