Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not one building but a knot of them, grown over seventeen centuries on the spot that Christian tradition identifies as both Golgotha, the hill of the crucifixion, and the rock-cut tomb from which Jesus rose. The first church was built for the emperor Constantine between about 326 and 335, to designs by the architect Zenobius: a round Anastasis ("Resurrection") over the tomb and a basilica across a courtyard. Persian armies burned it in 614, the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim ordered its destruction in 1009, and a Byzantine rebuilding followed in the 1040s.

The church that visitors enter today is essentially the work of the Crusaders, who took Jerusalem in 1099 and drew the scattered chapels together under one roof in Romanesque style, adding the bell tower; the work was completed in 1149, in the reign of Queen Melisende. The Romanesque entrance façade is theirs, and so are the many small crosses scratched by pilgrims into the walls of the stairway down to the Chapel of Saint Helena. After a fire in 1808 brought down the dome of the rotunda, the Greek architect Nikolaos Komnenos rebuilt it, and the ornate shrine over the tomb itself, the Aedicule, dates from that campaign.

Inside, the building is dim, crowded and layered. Just beyond the entrance lies the Stone of Anointing, where pilgrims kneel; a steep stair climbs to Calvary, with its Greek Orthodox and Catholic chapels side by side. Under the great rotunda stands the Aedicule, restored in 2016–17, when the original limestone burial bench inside was exposed for the first time in centuries. On the roof above the Chapel of Saint Helena, the Ethiopian monks of Deir es-Sultan keep a small monastery.

What makes the place unique is the way it is shared. Six Christian communities hold rights here under the Status Quo, an Ottoman arrangement fixed in 1757 and confirmed in 1853: the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian churches as the main custodians, with Coptic, Syriac and Ethiopian communities holding smaller rights. Nothing may change without agreement, which is why a wooden ladder has stood on a ledge of the façade since the eighteenth century. The great door is unlocked each morning by members of two Muslim families, the Nuseibeh and the Joudeh, who have held that role for centuries.

Getting there

The church stands in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, about 1 km from the centre of West Jerusalem. It is a walk of roughly ten minutes from Jaffa Gate through the lanes of the Old City. The nearest international airport is Ben Gurion International Airport (TLV), about 42 km away; direct trains run from the airport to Jerusalem–Yitzhak Navon station in about 25 minutes, and from there the Old City is reached by light rail or on foot.