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The Church of the Holy Sepulchre
The Jerusalem church over the places Christians venerate as the crucifixion and tomb of Jesus
For most of the Christian world, no ground is holier than the few thousand square meters inside this church in Jerusalem's Christian Quarter. It encloses both Golgotha, or Calvary, where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, and the tomb where they believe he was buried and rose from the dead. Eastern Christians call it the Church of the Resurrection, the Anastasis. Since the fourth century, pilgrims have crossed continents to kneel at the Stone of Anointing and to enter the small shrine over the tomb. The building is just as famous for its shared custody, divided among several ancient churches under rules so finely balanced that a wooden ladder has stood on a ledge above the entrance since the 18th century.
The church is a dim, dense maze of chapels, stairways, and galleries built over many periods. Visitors enter through a single Crusader-era doorway in a 12th-century facade on a small courtyard. Just inside, steep steps lead up to Calvary, where Greek Orthodox and Catholic chapels stand over the rock. Under the great dome of the Rotunda stands the Edicule, the shrine that encloses the tomb, restored by a joint team in 2016 and 2017. The Greek Orthodox Katholikon fills the central nave, and stairs descend to Armenian and Catholic chapels associated with the finding of the True Cross. Since 2022 the churches have carried out a joint restoration of the entire floor, with archaeologists from Rome's Sapienza University excavating beneath it, a project in its final phase in 2025 and 2026.
Emperor Constantine ordered a basilica built here after his mother, Helena, visited Jerusalem, and it was dedicated in 335. The Fatimid caliph al-Hakim had it demolished in 1009, and it was rebuilt in the following decades and then remodeled by the Crusaders, who rededicated it in 1149. Ottoman decrees of 1757 and 1852 fixed the rights of each community in an arrangement known as the Status Quo, which still governs every lamp, procession, hour, and square meter. The Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic (through the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land), and Armenian Apostolic churches hold the main shares, while Coptic, Ethiopian, and Syriac Orthodox communities hold smaller ones. By long tradition, two Muslim families keep the key and open the door each morning, and Easter brings the largest crowds of the year.