6 Best Sights in Christian and Muslim Quarters, Jerusalem

This church, which was built by the Crusaders in the 12th century (the fourth to be built on this site), is believed to be the place where Jesus was crucified by the Romans, was buried, and rose from the dead. The site was officially consecrated, and the first church built here, following the visit in AD 326 by Helena, mother of the Byzantine emperor Constantine the Great. It and the adjacent Via Dolorosa encompass the stations of the cross.

Steep steps take you up from the church to Golgotha, or Calvary, as the site of the crucifixion is described in the New Testament. At the foot of the hill, opposite the main entrance, is the rectangular pink Stone of Unction, where, it is said, the body of Jesus was cleansed and prepared for burial. The tomb of Jesus, encased in a pink marble edifice, is in the rotunda to the left of the main entrance of the church.

The church is shared, albeit unequally and uncomfortably, by six Christian denominations: Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Egyptian Coptic, and Ethiopian, under an agreement imposed by the Ottoman Turkish authorities in 1852. Each section is guarded by its own denomination.

If you visit in the late afternoon (the time changes with the seasons), you can watch the groups in turn—Greek Orthodox, Latins (as Roman Catholics are known in the Holy Land), Armenian Orthodox, and Egyptian Copts—in procession from Calvary to the tomb. A modern agreement among the Greeks, the Latins, and the Armenians on the interior restoration of the great dome was hailed as an almost miraculous breakthrough in ecumenical relations.

For information about the church, see the feature "Jerusalem: Keeping the Faith" in this chapter.

The magnificent golden Dome of the Rock dominates the vast 35-acre Temple Mount, the area known to Muslims as Haram esh-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). At its southern end, immediately in front of you as you enter the area from the Western Wall plaza (the only gate for non-Muslims), is the large, black-domed al-Aqsa Mosque, the third in holiness for Muslims everywhere.

Herod the Great built the Temple Mount in the late 1st century BC, and included on the center of the plaza was the Second Temple, the one Jesus knew.

Jewish tradition identifies the great rock at the summit of the hill—now under the gold dome—as the foundation stone of the world, and the place where Abraham bound and almost sacrificed his son Isaac (Genesis 22). With greater probability, this was where the biblical King David made a repentance offering to the Lord (II Samuel 22), and where his son Solomon built "God's House," the so-called First Temple. The Second Temple stood on the identical spot, but the memory of its precise location was lost after the Roman destruction and the banning of Jews from Jerusalem.

The Haram today is a Muslim preserve, and tradition has it that Muhammad rose to heaven from this spot in Jerusalem to meet God face-to-face, received the teachings of Islam, and returned to Mecca the same night, and the great rock was the very spot from which the Prophet ascended.

The Muslim shrines are closed to non-Muslims to leave the faithful alone to enjoy the wondrous interiors of stained-glass windows, granite columns, green-and-gold mosaics, arabesques, and superb medieval masonry. Even if you can't get inside, the vast plaza is both visually and historically arresting and worth a visit. Take a look at the bright exterior tiles of the Dome of the Rock and the remarkable jigsaws of fitted red, white, and black stone in the 14th- and 15th-century Mamluk buildings that line the western edge of the plaza.

Security check lines to enter the area are often long; it's best to come early. Note that the gate near the Western Wall is for entrance only. You can exit through any of the other eight gates on the site. The Muslim attendants are very strict about modest dress, and prohibit Bibles in the area.

For information about these sites, see the feature "Jerusalem: Keeping the Faith" in this chapter.

Commonly called "the Way of the Cross" in English, the Latin Via Dolorosa literally translates as "the Way of Sorrow." It's venerated as the route Jesus walked, carrying his cross, from the place of his trial and condemnation by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate to the site of his crucifixion and burial. (Stations I and II are where the Antonia fortress once stood, widely regarded as the site of the "praetorium" referred to in the Gospels.) The present tradition jelled no earlier than the 18th century, but it draws on much older beliefs. Some of the incidents represented by the 14 Stations of the Cross are scriptural; others (III, IV, VI, VII, and IX) are not. Tiny chapels mark a few of the stations; the last five are inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Catholic pilgrim groups, or the Franciscan-led Friday afternoon procession, take about 45 minutes to wind their way through the busy market streets of the Muslim and Christian quarters, with prayers and chants at each station of the almost-mile-long route.

Here are the 14 stations on the Via Dolorosa that mark the route that Jesus took, from trial and condemnation to crucifixion and burial.

Station I. Jesus is tried and condemned by Pontius Pilate.

Station II. Jesus is scourged and given the cross.

Station III. Jesus falls for the first time. (Soldiers of the Free Polish Forces built the chapel here after World War II.)

Station IV. Mary embraces Jesus.

Station V. Simon of Cyrene picks up the cross.

Station VI. A woman wipes the face of Jesus, whose image remains on the cloth. (She is remembered as Veronica, apparently derived from the Latin word vera and the Greek word icon, meaning "true image.")

Station VII. Jesus falls for the second time. (The chapel contains one of the columns of the Byzantine Cardo, the main street of 6th-century Jerusalem.)

Station VIII. Jesus addresses the women in the crowd.

Station IX. Jesus falls for the third time.

Station X. Jesus is stripped of his garments.

Station XI. Jesus is nailed to the cross.

Station XII. Jesus dies on the cross.

Station XIII. Jesus is taken down from the cross.

Station XIV. Jesus is buried.

The arch that crosses the Via Dolorosa, just beyond Station II, and continues into the chapel of the adjacent convent, was once thought to have been the gate of Herod's Antonia fortress, perhaps the spot where the Roman governor Pontius Pilate presented Jesus to the crowd with the words "Ecce homo!" ("Behold, the man!"). Recent scholarship has determined otherwise: it was a triumphal arch built by the Roman emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD after his suppression of the second Jewish revolt and the dedication of a new Roman town, Aelia Capitolina, in place of Jerusalem.

The basement of the convent has several points of interest: an impressive reservoir with a barrel-vault roof, apparently built by Hadrian in the moat of Herod's older Antonia fortress; a tiny but attractive collection of ancient artifacts found on-site; and the famous lithostratos, or stone pavement, etched with games played by Roman legionnaires. The origin of one such diversion—the notorious Game of the King—called for the execution of a mock king, a sequence tantalizingly reminiscent of the New Testament description of the treatment of Jesus by the Roman soldiers. Contrary to tradition, however, the pavement of large, foot-worn brown flagstones is apparently not from Jesus's day, but was laid down a century or two later. Allow 30 minutes for the visit.

Stand in the monastery's courtyard beneath the medieval bulge of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and you have a cross section of Christendom. The adjacent Egyptian Coptic monastery peeks through the entrance gate, and a Russian Orthodox gable, a Lutheran bell tower, and the crosses of Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches break the skyline.

The robed Ethiopian monks live in tiny cells in the rooftop monastery. One of the modern paintings in their small, dark chapel depicts the visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, as described in the Bible (I Kings 10). Ethiopian tradition holds that more passed between the two than the Bible is telling—she came to "prove" his wisdom "with hard questions"—and that their supposed union produced an heir to both royal houses. In Solomon's court, the prince was met with hostility by the king's legitimate offspring, says the legend, and the young man was sent home—with the precious Ark of the Covenant as a gift. To this day (say the Ethiopians), it remains in a sealed crypt in their homeland. The script in the paintings is Ge'ez, the ecclesiastical language of the Ethiopian church. Taking in the rooftop view and the chapel will occupy about 15 minutes. The exit, via a short stairway to another, lower-level chapel, deposits you in the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

The transition is sudden and complete, from the raucous cobbled streets and persistent vendors to the pepper trees, flower beds, and birdsong of this serene Catholic monastery of the amiable White Fathers. The Romanesque Church of St. Anne was built by the Crusaders in 1140, and restored in the 19th century. Its austere and unadorned stone interior and extraordinarily reverberant acoustics make it one of the finest examples of medieval architecture in the country. According to local tradition, the Virgin Mary was born in the grotto over which the church is built, and the church is supposedly named after her mother (although "Anne" is never mentioned in the Gospels).

In the same compound are the excavated Pools of Bethesda, a large public reservoir in use during the 1st century BC and 1st century AD. The New Testament speaks of Jesus miraculously curing a lame man by "a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda" (John 5). The actual bathing pools were probably the small ones, east of the reservoir, but it was over the big pools that both the Byzantines and the Crusaders built churches, now ruined, to commemorate the miracle. A visit to both sites takes no more than 30 minutes. The good bathrooms here are a welcome addition.

Wait for one or two pilgrim groups who often test the acoustics in the church with some hymn-singing.