MIDDLE EAST

JERUSALEM. To mark the 3,000th anniversary of King David's conquest of this ancient city, Jerusalem is throwing a lavish 16-month festival featuring traditional art, music, food, religious ceremonies and archaeological exhibits. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin launches the $7 million celebration this week with the inauguration of an archaeological park on the site of the ancient City of David, south of the present Old City walls Though the area is not yet open to the public, the Israel. Antiquities Authority will offer guided tours to David's City and the neighboring Valley of the Kings during the Jewish feast of Sukkot on Oct. 10 to 13. This week the Deutsche Staatsoper of Berlin, under Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim, will perform at the open-air Sultan's Pool amphitheater, the International Convention Center and Hebrew University. The orchestra's programs will include, appropriately, Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and Beethoven's Christ on the Mount of Olives.

THE AMERICAS

GUADALAJARA. The land of the mariachis, as the central Mexican city is known, will be filled with light and music this week as the state of Jalisco hosts its Second Annual Mariachi Festival in a tribute to the traditional sombreroed bands. Some 25 Mexican and 25 foreign groups, coming from as far away as the Netherlands and Japan, are expected to participate in the weeklong bash that features fiestas in Guadalajara's four beautiful plazas as well as moonlight serenades, a Mexican rodeo, workshops and a gala mariachi concert on Thursday at the Benito Jurez Auditorium in Zapopan.

EUROPE

HAMBURG. The Hamburger Kunsthalle is the site of the first retrospective of the works of British pop artist David Hockney. The exhibition of about 170 drawings and sketchbooks, some on display for the first time, ranges from the provocative early sketches related to his homosexuality and the strongly individualistic portraits of his parents and friends to the more recent, vividly colorful abstract landscapes. "Drawings are far more immediate than paintings," said Hockney in Hamburg, where his exhibition will run through Oct. 22.

ASIA

RANGOON. The Visit Burma year will not start officially until October 1996, but already the government has announced that it is relaxing rules for issuing visas to foreigners. While getting a tourist visa to Burma was often an agonizingly slow process in the past, its embassies have now been instructed to issue them within 24 hours. Trying to boost the number of tourists (about 100,000 a year) coming to this land with a rich architectural heritage of temples and pagodas and a mix of traditional cultures, he government is also relaxing regulation of unofficial money exchanges. Tourists can trade U.S. dollars for foreign-exchange certificates at a rate of 100 kyats to a dollar-much better than the official rate of six kyats to a buck.