We begin our visit to the old town at the Jaffa Gate, a busy centre of traffic, to which the road from the station leads (p. [480]). To the S.E. of the gate, and partly on the site of Herod’s palace, rises the citadel El-Kala (Pl. D, 6; 14th and 16th cent.); the N.E. tower probably corresponds to the Phasaël Tower of the time of Herod.
David Street, one of the chief business streets, under different names (Sueikat Allân, Hâret el-Bizâr, and Tarîk Bâb es-Silseleh; Pl. D-G, 5), connects the Jaffa Gate with the Silseleh Gate of the Haram esh-Sherîf (p. [476]). On the left, opposite the citadel, is the well-stocked New Bazaar (Pl. D, 5).
At St. John’s Monastery (Pl. 29; E, 5), the Greek pilgrims’ hospice at the S.W. angle of the Mûristân (p. [475]), we first turn to the left into the Hâret en-Nâsara (Pl. E, 5, 4; Christians’ Street). On the left is the very ancient Patriarch’s Pool (Birket Hammâm el-Batrak; Pl. E, 5), assigned by tradition to king Hezekiah (about 700 B.C.); on the right is the Patriarch’s Bath. Opposite the Great Greek Monastery (Deir er-Rûm el-Kebîr; Pl. D, E, 4, 5), is, on the right, the entrance to the—
*Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Pl. E, 4; adm., see p. [471]), whose principal dome, crowned with a gilded cross, is everywhere conspicuous. This, especially at Easter, is the great goal of the pilgrims. The discovery of the Holy Sepulchre, which Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea, the father of church history (314–40), tells us was made by Constantine, induced that emperor to build a round church here, the so-called Anastasis (church of the resurrection), and a five-aisled basilica, dedicated to the sign of the Cross (Martyrion). These churches having been burned down by the Persians (p. [473]), Abbot Modestus, under Emp. Heraclius, began to build, in 629, a new church of the resurrection, the prototype of the Dome of the Rock (p. [477]), a new church of the Cross, and a small Calvary church on the supposed site of the Crucifixion (Golgotha). A fourth church, that of St. Mary, is said to have existed here in 670. Between 1140 and 1149, the period of the Second Crusade, the Crusaders caused a great new church to be built by the architect Jourdain, in the Romanesque transition style, under Arabian influence, an edifice intended to embrace almost all the holy places. On the E. side of the new double church a chapel was dedicated to St. Helena (d. about 326), the mother of Constantine, who, according to later historians, once made a pilgrimage to the holy places and discovered the true Cross near the Sepulchre. On the S. side of the double church a Gothic clock-tower, originally detached, was erected in 1160–80. After the destructions of 1187 and 1244 (see p. [473]), we hear of a handsome new church existing here in 1310. At length in 1719 a great part of the church was rebuilt, and at the joint cost of the Greeks and the Armenians, again in 1810 by the architect Komnenos Kalfa. Since then the Greek cathedral, the dome-roofed ‘Catholicon’, has occupied the nave of what was once the Crusaders’ basilica. Among the many additions the chapel of the Apparition (p. [475]) is one of the oldest (14th cent.).
In the N.W. corner of the Quadrangle, or outer court, over the Chapel of the Forty Martyrs, rises the Bell Tower, the upper part of which has been destroyed. The Façade, dating from the era of the Crusades, has fine reliefs of the French school over the portals.
A vestibule, where the custodians (p. [471]) sit, leads to the Stone of Unction (John xix. 38–40), last renewed in 1808.
The great Rotunda of the Sepulchre still has the foundation pillars, the massive outer wall of the W. semicircle, and the three apses of the Crusaders’ church. The round central structure embraces the Chapel of the Sepulchre and the Angels’ Chapel. Adjoining the Sepulchre is the 14th station of the Via Dolorosa (see below).
From the N.E. side of the ambulatory an ante-room leads to the Chapel of the Apparition, the chief Latin (Rom. Cath.) sanctuary, on the spot where Christ is said to have appeared to his mother. In a niche is shown a fragment of the ‘Column of Scourging’.
The Nave, which we next visit, has suffered greatly from the introduction of the Catholicon. The pointed windows, the clustered pillars, and the groined vaulting still bear traces of their origin in the Crusaders’ era. The southmost of the three chapels in the apse, in the outer wall of the choir ambulatory, contains the ‘Column of the Derision’.
To the left of this chapel a flight of 29 steps descends to St. Helena’s Chapel, belonging to the Armenians, on the site of Constantine’s basilica, with foundations of the period of Modestus; 13 more steps descend thence to the Chapel of the Finding of the Cross.