Monastery of the Temptation

Interesting facts

The cable car built in 1998 to carry visitors up to the monastery level is listed by Guinness as the longest cable car below sea level.

The cable car runs about 1,330 metres from near Tell es-Sultan, with its lower station some 220 metres below sea level.

In the 4th century Chariton the Confessor founded a lavra here, and monks carved some 35 cells into the mountain's eastern face.

Byzantine monastic life on the mountain ended with the Persian invasion of 614.

Under the Crusaders the Knights Templar fortified the summit and stored water in the old Hellenistic cisterns.

Herod the Great improved the water system of the summit fortress of Doq, which sat on a base about 76 by 30 metres.

In Ottoman times European visitors had to pay an annual fee of ten silver kuruş for safe passage on the mountain.

In Arabic the mountain is also called Jabal al-Arba'in, the Mountain of the Forty, after the forty days of Jesus's fast.

Caves on the mountain have yielded finds from the Chalcolithic to the Islamic era, including a Roman sandal and the remains of eighteen people.

Why it is worth it

Clinging to a sheer limestone cliff on the edge of the Judean Desert, the Monastery of the Temptation hangs above the oasis of Jericho like a row of swallows' nests. Its stacked walls and balconies are pressed against the rock face of the Mount of Temptation at about 350 metres above sea level, some 600 metres higher than the city below, and look out across the oasis to the Jordan Valley and the hills beyond.

The site is tied to the Gospel story of the forty days Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness while tempted by Satan. Christian tradition identifies a cave in this cliff as the place of that retreat, and early Christians called the mountain the Mount of the Temptation; the Crusaders knew it as Mons Quarantana, from the forty days of the fast, a name that survives in the Arabic Deir al-Qurunṭul. The first monastery was built over the cave by the Byzantines in the 6th century. After capturing the region in 1099, the Crusaders raised two churches here, one in a cave halfway up the cliff and one on the summit. Long before any of them, the summit carried a Hellenistic fortress called Doq, built by the Seleucids and later taken by the Hasmoneans; ancient sources record that Simon Maccabaeus was murdered there by his son-in-law Ptolemy.

The present monastery belongs to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The Orthodox Church bought the land in 1874, and in 1895 the building was erected around a rough cave chapel that, by tradition, contains the stone on which Jesus sat during his fast. An attempt to build a church on the summit was never completed, and its unfinished walls still stand on the slope above. A small community of monks lives here.

Jericho below is among the oldest cities in the world and, at about 258 metres below sea level, the lowest. Permanent settlement began by the Ein es-Sultan spring more than eleven thousand years ago, and the ancient mound of Tell es-Sultan in the city centre has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2023.

Getting there

The monastery lies on the north-western edge of Jericho, in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, about 2 km from the city centre. The nearest major airport is Ben Gurion International (TLV), about 54 km away in a straight line.

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia

The Monastery of the Temptation is a Greek Orthodox monastery located in Jericho, Palestine. It was built on the slopes of the Mount of Temptation 350 meters above sea level, situated along a cliff overlooking the city of Jericho and the Jordan Valley. Its most ancient structures date back to the 6th century, having been built above the cave traditionally said to be that where Jesus spent forty days and forty nights fasting and meditating while he was tempted by Satan.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia