Tomb of the Virgin Mary

Also known as Church of the Sepulchre of Saint Mary, Tomb of Mary

Cut partly into the bedrock at the foot of the Mount of Olives, the Crusader Church of the Sepulchre of Saint Mary marks the traditional tomb of the Virgin. The Frankish builders in the twelfth century reshaped a fifth-century Byzantine martyrium into a cruciform church with a wide forty-eight-step descending staircase that survives almost intact today. Queen Melisende of Jerusalem was buried here in 1161 in a side chapel halfway down the stairs, and the church became the principal funerary site for the royal house. Because Mary is revered in Islam as the mother of the prophet Isa, the underground crypt and the Crusader staircase were left largely intact after Saladin's reconquest in 1187, and the building remains in continuous Christian use today, shared between the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic communities.

Coordinates: 31.7800°, 35.2389°

Read more on Wikipedia: English article · עברית