In the heart of Jerusalem, just steps from Mahane Yehuda and the light rail, stands one of the city’s strangest landmarks: the Clal Center, a massive concrete complex once meant to drag the capital into a sleek modern future. Instead, it became a local legend for all the wrong reasons.

Built as Jerusalem’s first upscale indoor shopping center, Clal was supposed to be the city’s commercial engine, a multi-level mall, office tower, banks, government offices, a cinema and dozens of stores packed into one ambitious urban machine. The idea was bold for its time. Jerusalem, still reshaping itself after the Six-Day War, was watching developers dream bigger, taller and more modern than the old Ottoman and British-era cityscape around them. But Clal never became the future. It became the maze.

Its spiraling half-floors confused shoppers, its elevators skipped levels and its layout often left visitors disoriented. The open-air atrium at the center of the project was eventually covered after Jerusalem’s winter weather made the design impractical, leaving the interior dim and yellowed rather than bright and inviting. Over time, the building’s ownership structure only compounded the problem. With too many private owners and no clear authority capable of reimagining the property, maintenance became difficult and large-scale improvements proved nearly impossible.

Then came the decline. As newer developments emerged and Malha Mall pulled shoppers away from downtown, offices emptied and storefronts went dark. The building gradually acquired an almost mythic reputation as one of Jerusalem’s great architectural failures, complete with an urban legend about a body hidden in its concrete foundations, a story police dismissed and later investigations debunked. Still, the nickname stuck. For many Jerusalemites, Clal became the city’s “cursed” building. Yet the strangest thing about Clal Center is that it refuses to die.

Inside the concrete labyrinth there is still life. Small offices continue to operate, niche businesses occupy forgotten corners and even the Davidka Guesthouse has found a home within a structure many locals spend years trying to avoid. It is exactly the kind of place tourists rarely visit but residents somehow never stop talking about. The biggest surprise, however, sits above it all.

Perched on the roof, Muslala, a Jerusalem arts and sustainability collective, has created one of the city’s most unexpected green spaces. Known as HaMirpeset, the rooftop garden and cultural center features workshops, events, urban agriculture, seating areas, art installations, beehives and even rooftop camping. It feels almost impossible that this quiet oasis overlooking the city exists atop one of Jerusalem’s most criticized buildings.

Some owners reportedly want the building demolished and replaced with something cleaner, newer and more profitable. They may eventually get their way. Jerusalem is changing rapidly, with towers rising, rail lines expanding and old neighborhoods being reshaped by a new generation of development.

Until then, Clal Center remains standing, part failure, part time capsule, part punchline and part miracle. For a project that was supposed to represent Jerusalem’s future, its greatest achievement may simply be that it survived long enough to become something nobody originally imagined.