From a press release from the Israel Antiquities Authority:

In a festive ceremony to be held Today – Tuesday, June 21, 2011, the Ophel City Wall site, a complex of buildings uncovered along the route of the fortifications from the First Temple period (tenth-sixth centuries BCE), and the display of the earliest written document ever uncovered in Jerusalem will be inaugurated. The opening of the site, located in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park, and the exhibit in the Davidson Center are made possible through the generous donation by Daniel Mintz and Meredith Berkman.
[…]
Upon completion of the excavation and conservation work at the Ophel City Wall site, visitors will now be able to touch the stones and walls whose construction tells the history of Jerusalem throughout the ages. It is now possible to walk comfortably through the built remains, in places that were previously closed to the public, to sense their splendor and learn about the history of the region by the signage and the different means of presentation and illustration.
[…]
The highlight of the excavations is the complete exposure of the gate house. The plan of this impressive building includes four rooms of identical size, arranged on both sides of a broad corridor paved with crushed limestone. The plan of the gate house is characteristic of the First Temple period (tenth-sixth centuries BCE) and is similar to contemporaneous gates that were revealed at Megiddo, Be‘er Sheva’ and Ashdod. The excavator, Eilat Mazar, suggests identifying the gate house here with the ‘water gate’ mentioned in the Bible: “…and the temple servants living on Ophel repaired to a point opposite the Water Gate on the east and the projecting tower” (Nehemiah 3:26). The ground floor of a large building that was destroyed in a fierce conflagration can be seen east of the gate. Mazar suggests that this structure was destroyed by the Babylonian conquest of the city in 586 BCE. Twelve very large, clay store jars (pithoi), which probably contained wine or oil, were discovered on the floor of the building. Engraved on the shoulder of one of these pithoi is the Hebrew inscription “לשר האו…”. The inscription indicates that this pithos belonged to one of the kingdom’s ministers, perhaps the overseer of the bakers.
During the course of the excavation the earliest written document to be exposed to date in Jerusalem was discovered. This unique find, which is of extraordinary importance to the history of the city, will now be on permanent display to the public in the Davidson Center. This is a very small fragment of a clay tablet engraved in Akkadian cuneiform script, which was the lingua franca of the time. Among the very skillfully written words that can be read are the words: “you were”, “later”, “to do” and “they”. The tablet and the writing are typical of the tablets that were used in antiquity throughout Mesopotamia for international correspondence.

The full press release, along with 19 photographs (including the one above), is available at the IAA site (temporary link). I’d be curious to know if there are any other archaeologists who agree with Mazar’s identification of the structure she excavated as a gate. Some years ago it seemed that even those most sympathetic to her views did not follow her on this, but perhaps that has changed. I note that the press release does not state that this is a gate but that “Mazar suggests” that it is a gate.

UPDATE: Joseph Lauer sends along links to the story in the Jerusalem Post, Bloomberg, and Arutz-7.

UPDATE (6/22): Leen Ritmeyer provides his response to my question about the identification of the building.

Matti Friedman, writing for the AP, describes the various “underground tours” that are open to tourists in Jerusalem.  He also touches on the political and religious complications.

Underneath the crowded alleys and holy sites of old Jerusalem, hundreds of people are snaking at any given moment through tunnels, vaulted medieval chambers and Roman sewers in a rapidly expanding subterranean city invisible from the streets above.
At street level, the walled Old City is an energetic and fractious enclave with a physical landscape that is predominantly Islamic and a population that is mainly Arab.
Underground Jerusalem is different: Here the noise recedes, the fierce Middle Eastern sun disappears, and light comes from fluorescent bulbs. There is a smell of earth and mildew, and the geography recalls a Jewish city that existed 2,000 years ago.
Archaeological digs under the disputed Old City are a matter of immense sensitivity. For Israel, the tunnels are proof of the depth of Jewish roots here, and this has made the tunnels one of Jerusalem’s main tourist draws: The number of visitors, mostly Jews and Christians, has risen dramatically in recent years to more than a million visitors in 2010.
But many Palestinians, who reject Israel’s sovereignty in the city, see them as a threat to their own claims to Jerusalem. And some critics say they put an exaggerated focus on Jewish history.

The story continues here.  The underground “route” that Friedman describes begins with a walk through Hezekiah’s Tunnel (or its alternate, the Siloam Tunnel).  Then, later this summer, one will be able to enter the Roman drainage system and walk all the way to the Western Wall plaza.  In several years, a new route will take visitors on the first-century street beneath the prayer plaza.  That will link up with the Western Wall tunnels which run north along Herod’s well-preserved retaining wall.

For more of the political angle on the “Underground Jerusalem” excavations, see last month’s article in Haaretz (noted here).  For some additional photographs, see Leen Ritmeyer’s post.

HT: Joseph Lauer