St Anne's Church, Jerusalem, by Giovanni Lami

St Anne's Church, Jerusalem

by Giovanni Lami

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Interior 01:25

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The Church of St. Anne is a Roman Catholic church, located at the start of the Via Dolorosa, near the Lions' Gate and churches of the Flagellation and Condemnation, in the Muslim Quarter of the old city of Jerusalem.
The current church, erected near the remains of an earlier Byzantine basilica, and over the site of a grotto believed by the Crusaders to be the birthplace of Anne the mother of Mary, was completed in 1138 by Arda, widow of Baldwin I, the first titled king of Jerusalem. The earlier Byzantine basilica had been built over what remained of a pagan shrine to either the Egyptian god Serapis or the Greek god Asclepius, both gods of healing. Unlike many other Crusader churches, St. Anne's was not destroyed by the Mamelukes who captured the Holy Land in the twelfth century. In 1192, a year after his conquest of Jerusalem, Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn converted it into an Islamic seminary, noted by the Arabic inscription Salahiya (of Saladin) above the entrance. During the Muslim rule of Palestine, Christian pilgrims were only permitted inside the grotto after paying a fee. Eventually the church was abandoned and fell into ruin. In 1856, in gratitude for French support during the Crimean War, the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid I presented it to Napoleon III. It was subsequently restored, but the majority of what remains today is original. Currently St. Anne's belongs to the French government and is administered by the White Fathers, an order of the Catholic Church named for the colour of their robes.