Church of the Nativity

The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is built over a grotto that Christians have venerated as the birthplace of Jesus since at least the third century, making it the oldest site in continuous Christian worship. Constantine the Great commissioned the first basilica after his mother Helena's pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 320s; it was dedicated in 339. That church burned in a sixth-century revolt, and the building that stands today is essentially the one raised under Justinian, with its long nave flanked by four aisles and a cross-shaped east end with three apses.

The first thing a visitor notices is how small the way in is. The grand Byzantine entrance was walled up during the Ottoman period, reportedly to stop people riding in on horseback, leaving the low Door of Humility through which everyone must stoop. Inside, 44 Corinthian columns divide the nave and aisles, several painted by Crusader-era artists with saints including the kings Olaf of Norway and Canute of Denmark. Trapdoors in the floor reveal fragments of the mosaic pavement of Constantine's church, and high on the walls survive parts of the golden twelfth-century mosaics, signed by artists named Ephraim and Basil. A restoration completed in the late 2010s cleaned them and uncovered a seventh mosaic angel that had been hidden under plaster.

Beneath the east end lies the Grotto of the Nativity, where a fourteen-pointed silver star set in the floor bears a Latin inscription marking the traditional spot of the birth. The theft of an earlier star in 1847 became one of the sparks of the rivalry between France and Russia over the holy places that fed into the Crimean War. Since the mid-nineteenth century the church has been shared by the Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Catholic communities under an arrangement known as the Status Quo, and the Catholic Church of St Catherine adjoins it to the north. In 2012 it became the first World Heritage Site inscribed under the name of Palestine.

Getting there

The church stands on Manger Square in the centre of Bethlehem, a city about 10 km south of Jerusalem. Ben Gurion International Airport (TLV) lies roughly 46 km away in a straight line.