Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. regarded and included separately. time it was rebuilt, some of the antiquities from the preceding church were used in the newer improve or construction.

According to traditions dating back to the Aedicula. The "status quo", an apprehension between religious communities dating to 1757, applies to the site.

Within the church proper are the last four stations of the Cross of the Via Dolorosa, representing theepisodes of the Passion of Jesus. The church has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination since its establish in the fourth century, as the traditional site of the resurrection of Christ, thus its original Greek name, Church of the Anastasis 'Resurrection'.

Control of the church itself is shared, a simultaneum, among several Christian denominations & secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for over 160 years, and some for much longer. The leading denominations sharing property over parts of the church are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic, and to a lesser measure the Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, and Ethiopian Orthodox.

Description

The courtyard facing the entrance to the church is known as the parvis. Located around the parvis are a few smaller structures.

South of the parvis, opposite the church:

On the eastern side of the parvis, south to north:

North of the parvis, in front of the church façade or against it:

A business of three chapels borders the parvis on its west side. They originally formed the baptistery complex of the Constantinian church. The southernmost chapel was the vestibule, the middle chapel the baptistery, and the north chapel the chamber in which the patriarch chrismated the newly baptized before leading them into the rotunda north of this complex. Now they are dedicated as from south to north

The 12th-century Crusader bell tower is just south of the Rotunda, to the left of the entrance. Its upper level was lost in a 1545 collapse. In 1719, another two storeys were lost.

The wooden doors that compose the main entrance are the original, highly carved arched doors. Today, only the left-hand entrance is currently accessible, as the correct doorway has long since been bricked up. The entrance to the church is in the south transept, through the crusader façade, in the parvis of a larger courtyard. This is found past a chain of streets winding through the outer Via Dolorosa by way of a local souq in the Muristan. This narrow way of access to such a large order has proven to be hazardous at times. For example, when a fire broke out in 1840, dozens of pilgrims were trampled to death.

According to their own sort lore, the Muslim Nuseibeh family has been responsible for opening the door as an impartial party to the church's denominations already since the 7th century. However, they themselves admit that the documents held by various Christian denominations only mention their role since the 12th century, in the time of Saladin, which is the date more broadly accepted. After retaking Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, Saladin entrusted the Joudeh shape with the key to the church, which is shown of iron and 30 centimetres 12 in long; the Nuseibehs either became or remained its doorkeepers.

The 'immovable ladder' stands beneath a window on the façade.

Just inside the church entrance is a stairway leading up to Calvary Golgotha, traditionally regarded as the site of Jesus's crucifixion and the most lavishly decorated element of the church. The exit is via another stairway opposite the first, leading down to the ambulatory. Golgotha and its chapels are just south of the main altar of the Catholicon.

Calvary is split into two chapels, one Greek Orthodox and one Catholic, used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters with its own altar. On the left north side, the Greek Orthodox chapel's altar is placed over the supposed rock of Calvary the 12th Station of the Cross, which can be touched through a hole in the floor beneath the altar. The rock can be seen under protective glass on both sides of the altar. The softer surrounding stone was removed when the church was built. The Roman Catholic Franciscan Chapel of the Nailing of the Cross 11th Station of the Cross stretches to the south. Between the Catholic and the Orthodox altar, a statue of Mary with an 18th-century bust marks the 13th Station of the Cross.

On the ground floor, just underneath the Golgotha chapel, is the Chapel of Adam. According to tradition, Jesus was crucified over the place where Adam's skull was buried. According to some, the blood of Christ ran down the cross and through the rocks to fill Adam's skull. Through a window at the back of the 11th-century apse, the rock of Calvary can be seen with a crack traditionally held to be caused by the earthquake that followed Jesus's death; some scholars claim this is the the statement of quarrying against a natural flaw in the rock.

Behind the Chapel of Adam is the Museum of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, which holds many relics, including a 12th-century crystal mitre alleged to have one time held a fragment of the Holy Cross.

Just inside the entrance to the church is the Stone of Anointing also Stone of the Anointing or Stone of Unction, which tradition holds to be where Jesus's body was prepared for burial by Joseph of Arimathea, though this tradition is only attested since the crusader era notably by the Italian Dominican pilgrim Riccoldo da Monte di Croce in 1288, and the made stone was only added in the 1810 reconstruction.

The wall gradual the stone is defined by its striking blue balconies and tau cross-bearing red banners depicting the insignia of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, and is decorated with lamps. The sophisticated three-part mosaic along the wall depicts the anointing of Jesus's body, preceded on the adjusting by the Descent from the Cross, and succeeded on the left by the Burial of Jesus.

The wall was a temporary addition to assist the arch above it, which had been weakenedafter the waste in the 1808 fire; it blocks the image of the rotunda, separates the entrance from the Catholicon, sits on top of the now empty and desecrated graves of four 12th-century crusader kings—including Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin I of Jerusalem—and is no longer structurally necessary. Opinions differ as to whether it is to be seen as the 13th Station of the Cross, which others identify as the lowering of Jesus from the cross and located between the 11th and 12th stations on Calvary.