Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is also known as the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre or simply as the Holy Sepulchre, named for the tomb of Jesus, which is at the focal point of his resurrection according to Christians. Eastern Christians also directly call it the Church of the Resurrection or the Church of the Anastasis () being Greek for 'resurrection'. ==History==

Background (1st–4th centuries) After the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 during the First Jewish–Roman War, Jerusalem had been reduced to ruins. In AD 130, the Roman emperor Hadrian began the building of a Roman colony, the new city of , on the site. About AD 135, he ordered that a cave containing a rock-cut tomb be filled in to make a flat foundation for a temple dedicated to Jupiter or Venus. The temple remained until the early fourth century. Constantine and Macarius: context for the first sanctuary After seeing a vision of a cross in the sky in 312, Constantine the Great began to favour Christianity and signed the Edict of Milan legalizing the religion. The Bishop of Jerusalem Macarius asked Constantine for permission to dig for the tomb. With the help of Eusebius (a Bishop of Caesarea) and Macarius, three crosses were found near a tomb; one, which was said to have cured people near death, was presumed to be the True Cross, on which Jesus was crucified, leading the Romans to believe that they had found Calvary. About 326, Constantine ordered that the temple to Jupiter or Venus be replaced by a church. First sanctuary (4th century) A shrine was built on the site of the tomb Macarius had identified as that of Jesus, enclosing the rock tomb walls within its own. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, planned by the architect Zenobius, was built as separate constructs over two holy sites: • a rotunda called the ('Resurrection'), where Macarius believed Jesus to have been buried, across a courtyard to the east (an enclosed colonnaded atrium, known as the Triportico) with the traditional site of Calvary in one corner. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre site has been recognized since early in the fourth century as the place where Jesus was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead. After Jerusalem came under Islamic rule, it remained a Christian church, with the early Muslim rulers protecting the city's Christian sites, prohibiting their destruction or use as living quarters. A story reports that the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab visited the church and stopped to pray on the balcony, but at the time of prayer, turned away from the church and prayed outside. He feared that future generations would misinterpret this gesture, taking it as a pretext to turn the church into a mosque. Eutychius of Alexandria adds that Umar wrote a decree saying that Muslims would not inhabit this location. The building suffered severe damage from an earthquake in 746. Destruction and reconstruction (11th century) On 18 October 1009, Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of the church as part of a more general campaign against Christian and Jewish places of worship in Palestine and Egypt. The damage was extensive, with few parts of the early church remaining, and the roof of the rock-cut tomb damaged; the original shrine was destroyed. The tomb itself was almost completely destroyed, with only portions of the northern wall containing the burial bench and the southern wall surviving. Some partial repairs followed. Christian Europe reacted with shock: it was a spur to expulsions of Jews and, later on, used as a justification for the Crusades. In wide-ranging negotiations between the Fatimids and the Byzantine Empire in 1027–1028, an agreement was reached whereby the new Caliph Ali az-Zahir (al-Hakim's son) agreed to allow the rebuilding and redecoration of the church. The rebuilding was finally completed during the tenures of Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Patriarch Nicephorus of Jerusalem in 1048, during the reign of al-Mustansir Billah (Ali az-Zahir's son). As a concession, the mosque in Constantinople was reopened and the khutba sermons were to be pronounced in az-Zahir's name. The chapels were east of the court of resurrection (when reconstructed, the location of the tomb was under open sky), where the western wall of the great basilica had been. They commemorated scenes from the passion, such as the location of the prison of Christ and his flagellation, and presumably were so placed because of the difficulties of free movement among shrines in the city streets. The dedication of these chapels indicates the importance of the pilgrims' devotion to the suffering of Christ. They have been described as "a sort of Via Dolorosa in miniature" since little or no rebuilding took place on the site of the great basilica. Western pilgrims to Jerusalem during the 11th century found much of the sacred site in ruins. Crusader period (1099–1187) Background Many historians maintain that the main concern of Pope Urban II, when calling for the First Crusade, was the threat to Constantinople from the Seljuk invasion of Asia Minor in response to the appeal of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Historians agree that the fate of Jerusalem and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was also of concern, if not the immediate goal of papal policy in 1095. The idea of taking Jerusalem gained more focus as the Crusade was underway. The rebuilt church site was taken from the Fatimids (who had recently taken it from the Abbasids) by the knights of the First Crusade on 15 July 1099. Crusaders: reconstruction (12th century) and ownership By the Crusader period, a cistern under the former basilica was rumoured to have been where Helena had found the True Cross, and began to be venerated as such; the cistern later became the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross, but there is no evidence of the site's identification before the 11th century, and modern archaeological investigation has now dated the cistern to 11th-century repairs by Monomachos. in the church: crosses engraved in the staircase leading down to the Chapel of Saint Helena The Crusaders began to refurnish the church in Romanesque style and added a bell tower. The royal tombs were looted during the Khwarizmian sack of Jerusalem in 1244 but probably remained mostly intact until 1808 when a fire damaged the church. The tombs may have been destroyed by the fire, or during renovations by the Greek Orthodox custodians of the church in 1809–1810. The remains of the kings may still be in unmarked pits under the church's pavement. Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods The church was lost to Saladin, The church seems to have been largely in the hands of Greek Orthodox patriarch Athanasius II of Jerusalem (c. 1231–47) during the last period of Latin control over Jerusalem. Both city and church were captured by the Khwarezmians and the Ayyubids in 1244. During the Holy Week of 1757, Orthodox Christians reportedly took over some of the Franciscan-controlled church. This may have been the cause of the sultan's firman (decree) later developed into the Status Quo. A fire severely damaged the structure again in 1808, causing the dome of the rotunda to collapse and smashing the Aedicule's exterior decoration. The rotunda and the Aedicule's exterior were rebuilt in 1809–10 by architect Nikolaos Ch. Komnenos of Mytilene in the contemporary Ottoman Baroque style. The interior of the antechamber, now known as the Chapel of the Angel, was partly rebuilt to a square ground plan in place of the previously semicircular western end. Another decree in 1853 from the sultan solidified the existing territorial division among the communities and solidified the Status Quo for arrangements to "remain in their present state", requiring consensus to make even minor changes. The dome was restored by Catholics, Greeks, and Turks in 1868, being made of iron ever since. British Mandate period By the time of the British Mandate for Palestine following the end of World War I, the cladding of red limestone applied to the Aedicule by Komnenos had deteriorated badly and was detaching from the underlying structure; from 1947 until restoration work in 2016–17, it was held in place with an exterior scaffolding of iron girders installed by the British authorities. Blocks of Meleke limestone were extracted from the quarry and their traces can be seen on the surfaces of floors, walls and the ceiling in the Chapel of St. Vartan Chapel of St. Vartan East of the Chapel of Saint Helena, the excavators discovered a void containing a fourth-century drawing of a Roman pilgrim ship, two low walls supporting the platform of Hadrian's second-century temple, and a higher fourth-century wall built to support Constantine's basilica. After the excavations of the early 1970s, the Armenian authorities converted this archaeological space into the Chapel of Saint Vartan, and created an artificial walkway over the quarry on the north of the chapel, so that the new chapel could be accessed (by permission) from the Chapel of Saint Helena. The existence of the original limestone cave walls within the Aedicule was confirmed, and a window was created to view this from the inside. Members of the National Technical University of Athens were present. Initially, only a layer of debris was visible. This was cleared in the next day, and a partially broken marble slab with a Crusader-style cross carved was revealed. 2020 pandemic On 25 March 2020, Israeli health officials ordered the site closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Joudeh al-Goudia family who are hereditary keepers of the keys, it was the first such closure since 1349, during the Black Death. Clerics continued regular prayers inside the building, and it reopened to visitors two months later, on 24 May. Crusader altar slab discovered (2022) During church renovations in 2022, a stone slab covered in modern graffiti was moved from a wall, revealing Cosmatesque-style decoration on one face. According to an IAA archaeologist, the decoration was once inlaid with pieces of glass and fine marble; it indicates the object was the frontal of the church's high altar from the Crusader era (c. 1149), which was later used by the Greek Orthodox until being damaged in the 1808 fire. ==Description==

Parvis (courtyard) , 1870s ), with the immovable ladder under a window, and the Chapel of the Franks (right). The courtyard facing the entrance to the church is known as the parvis. Two streets open into the parvis: St Helena Road (west) and Suq ed-Dabbagha (east). Around the parvis are a few smaller structures. South of the parvis, opposite the church, broken columns—once forming part of an arcade—stand opposite the church, at the top of a short descending staircase stretching over the entire breadth of the parvis. In the 13th century, the tops of the columns were removed and sent to Mecca by the Khwarezmids. • The Gethsemane Metochion, a small Greek Orthodox monastery (metochion). On the eastern side of the parvis, south to north: • The Monastery of St Abraham (Greek Orthodox), next to the Suq ed-Dabbagha entrance to the parvis. • The Chapel of St John the Evangelist (Armenian Orthodox) • The Chapel of St Michael and the Chapel of the Four Living Creatures (both disputed between the Copts and Ethiopians), giving access to Deir es-Sultan (also disputed), a rooftop monastery surrounding the dome of the Chapel of St Helena. North of the parvis, in front of the church façade or against it: • Chapel of the Franks (Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows): a blue-domed Roman Catholic Crusader chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, which once provided exclusive access to Calvary. The chapel marks the 10th Station of the Cross (the Stripping of Jesus's Garments). • Oratory of St. Mary of Egypt: a Greek Orthodox oratory and chapel, directly beneath the Chapel of the Franks, dedicated to the ascetic St. Mary of Egypt. • The tomb (including a ledgerstone) of Philip d'Aubigny (died 1236), a knight, tutor, and royal councillor to Henry III of England and signer of Magna Carta—is placed in front of, and between, the church's two original entrance doors, of which the eastern one is walled up. It is one of the few tombs of crusaders and other Europeans not removed from the Church after the Khwarizmian capture of Jerusalem in 1244. In the 1900s, during a fight between the Greeks and Latins, some monks damaged the tomb by throwing stones from the roof. A stone marker was placed on his tomb in 1925, sheltered by a wooden trapdoor that hides it from view. A group 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 Chapel of St. James the Just (Greek Orthodox), • The Chapel of St. John the Baptist (Greek Orthodox), • The Chapel of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (Greek Orthodox; at the base of the bell tower). Bell tower The 12th-century Crusader bell tower is just south of the Rotunda, to the left of the entrance. Its uppermost level was lost in a 1545 collapse. In 1719, another two storeys were lost. Façade and entrance The façade and entrance have undergone significant changes since their construction in the 12th century. The entrance doors were originally topped with ornate lintels, and their tympanums were decorated with mosaics. The doors themselves were likely decorated with sculpture. Today, the original lintels are on display at the Rockefeller Archeological Museum, the mosaics are completely missing, and nothing of the original doors remains. Only the left-hand entrance is currently accessible, as the right doorway has long since been bricked up. The entrance to the church leads to the south transept, through the crusader façade in the parvis of a larger courtyard. This is found past a group of streets winding through the outer Via Dolorosa by way of a souq in the Muristan. This narrow way of access to such a large structure 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 family lore, the Muslim Nuseibeh family has been responsible for opening the door as a neutral party to the church's denominations already since the seventh century. However, they themselves admit the documents held by various Christian denominations only mention their role since the 12th century in the time of Saladin, which is the more generally accepted date. After retaking Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, Saladin entrusted the Joudeh family with the key to the church, which is made of iron and long; the Nuseibehs either became or remained the doorkeepers. which enshrines an 18th-century bust of the Virgin Mary with numerous ex-votos; this middle altar 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 it is the result of quarrying against a natural flaw in the rock. Behind the Chapel of Adam is the Greek Treasury (Treasury of the Greek Patriarch). Some of its relics, such as a 12th-century crystal mitre, were transferred to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Museum (the Patriarchal Museum) on Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Street. Stone of Unction Just inside the entrance to the church is the Stone of Unction (also the Stone of Anointing or Stone of the Anointing), 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 present stone was only added in the 1810 reconstruction. The wall was a temporary addition to support the arch above it, which had been weakened after the damage in the 1808 fire; it blocks the view of the rotunda, separates the entrance from the catholicon, sits on top of four of the now empty and desecrated Crusader graves 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. that has traditionally been used by the church's Muslim doorkeepers, along with some Christian clergy, as well as electrical wiring. To the right of the entrance is a wall along the ambulatory containing the staircase leading to Golgotha. Further along the same wall is the entrance to the Chapel of Adam. Rotunda and Aedicule The rotunda is the building of the larger dome located on the far west side. In the centre of the rotunda is a small chapel called the Aedicule in English, from the Latin , in reference to a small shrine. The Aedicule has two rooms: the first has a pedestal with a relic called the Angel's Stone, which is believed to be a fragment of the large stone that sealed the tomb; the second, smaller room contains the tomb of Jesus. Possibly to prevent pilgrims from removing bits of the original rock as souvenirs, by 1555, a surface of marble cladding was placed on the tomb to prevent further damage to the tomb. To its rear, in the Coptic Chapel, constructed of iron latticework, lies the altar used by the Coptic Orthodox. Historically, the Georgians also retained the key to the Aedicule. To the right of the sepulchre on the northwestern edge of the rotunda is the Chapel of the Apparition, which is reserved for Roman Catholic use. Though not within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre compound, directly adjacent to it is the Church of the Redeemer, marking a Lutheran presence at the site. The catholicon's iconostasis demarcates the Orthodox sanctuary behind it, to its east. The iconostasis is flanked to the front by two episcopal thrones: the southern seat (cathedra) is the patriarchal throne of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, and the northern seat is for an archbishop or bishop. There is also a popular claim that both are patriarchal thrones, with the northern one being for the patriarch of Antioch – this has since been dispelled. marked by a stone canopy (the Station of the Holy Women) and a large modern wall mosaic. The canopy is a conical roof in typical Armenian style has hanging lamps, and a central oil lamp on the embossed floor. From here, one can enter the Armenian monastery, which stretches over the ground and first upper floor of the church's southeastern part. Syriac Chapel with Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea West of the Aedicule, to the rear of the Rotunda, is the Syriac Chapel with the Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, located in a Constantinian apse and containing an opening to an ancient Jewish rock-cut tomb. This chapel is where the Syriac Orthodox celebrate their Liturgy on Sundays. The Syriac Orthodox Chapel of Saint Joseph of Arimathea and Saint Nicodemus. On Sundays and feast days it is furnished for the celebration of Mass. It is accessed from the Rotunda, by a door west of the Aedicule. First-century tomb On the far side of the chapel is the low entrance to an almost complete first-century Jewish tomb, initially holding six kokh-type funeral shafts radiating from a central chamber, two of which are still exposed. Although this space was discovered relatively recently Since Jews always buried their dead outside the city, the presence of this tomb seems to prove that the Holy Sepulchre site was indeed outside the city walls at the time of the Crucifixion. Franciscan area north of the Aedicule • The Franciscan Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene – The chapel, an open area, indicates the place where Mary Magdalene met Jesus after his resurrection. • The Franciscan Chapel of the Apparition (Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament), directly north of the above – in memory of Jesus's meeting with his mother after the Resurrection, a non-scriptural tradition. Arches of the Virgin The Arches of the Virgin are seven arches (an arcade) at the northern end of the north transept, which is to the catholicon's north. Disputed by the Orthodox and the Latins, the area is used to store ladders. Over the years the Greek-Orthodox patriarchate placed several icons along the arcade. Dating mostly to the 19th century and designed in Orthodox Post-Byzantine style, they were restored in 2021. Prison of Christ In the northeast side of the complex, there is the Prison of Christ, alleged to be where Jesus was held. The Greek Orthodox are showing pilgrims yet another place where Jesus was allegedly held, the similarly named Prison of Christ in their , located near the Church of Ecce Homo, between the Second and Third Stations of the Via Dolorosa. The Armenians regard a recess in the Monastery of the Flagellation at the Second Station of the Via Dolorosa as the Prison of Christ. A cistern among the ruins beneath the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu on Mount Zion is also alleged to have been the Prison of Christ. To reconcile the traditions, some allege that Jesus was held in the Mount Zion cell for his trial by the Jewish high priest, then at the Praetorium for his trial by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and near Golgotha before crucifixion. Ambulatory The chapels in the ambulatory are, from north to south: the Greek Chapel of Saint Longinus (named after Longinus), the Armenian Chapel of the Division of Robes (aka Parting of Garment), the entrance to the Chapel of Saint Helena, and the Greek Chapel of the Derision. Chapel of Saint Helena • Chapel of Saint Helena – between the Chapel of the Division of Robes and the Greek Chapel of the Derision are stairs descending to the Chapel of Saint Helena. The Armenians, who own it, call it the Chapel of St. Gregory the Illuminator, after the saint who brought Christianity to the Armenians. Chapel of Saint Vartan • Chapel of St Vartan (or Vardan) Mamikonian – on the north side of the Chapel of Saint Helena is an ornate wrought iron door, beyond which a raised artificial platform affords views of the quarry, and which leads to the Chapel of Saint Vartan. The latter chapel contains archaeological remains from Hadrian's temple and Constantine's basilica. These areas are open only on request. Chapel of the Invention of the Holy Cross • Chapel of the Invention of the Cross (named for the Invention (Finding) of the Holy Cross) – another set of 22 stairs from the Chapel of Saint Helena leads down to the Roman Catholic Chapel of the Invention of the Holy Cross, believed to be the place where the True Cross was found. ==Status Quo==

Ottoman decrees , the Immovable Ladder placed before 1728 remains in place to this day. An Ottoman decree of 1757 helped establish a status quo upholding the state of affairs for various Holy Land sites. The status quo was upheld in Sultan Abdülmecid I's firman (decree) of 1852/53, which pinned down the now-permanent statutes of property and the regulations concerning the roles of the different denominations and other custodians. The primary custodians are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches. The Greek Orthodox act through the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate as well as through the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre. Roman Catholics act through the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. In the 19th century, the Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox also acquired lesser responsibilities, which include shrines and other structures in and around the building. None of these controls the main entrance. In 1192, Saladin assigned door-keeping responsibilities to the Muslim Nusaybah family. The Joudeh al-Goudia (also al-Ghodayya) family were made custodians of the keys to the Holy Sepulchre by Saladin in 1187. Despite occasional disagreements, religious services take place in the Church with regularity and coexistence is generally peaceful. An example of concord between the Church custodians is the full restoration of the Aedicule from 2016 to 2017. Interdenominational issues The establishment of the modern Status Quo in 1853 did not halt controversy and occasional violence. In 1902, 18 friars were hospitalized and some monks were jailed after the Franciscans and Greeks disagreed over who could clean the lowest step of the Chapel of the Franks. In the aftermath, the Greek patriarch, Franciscan custos, Ottoman governor and French consul general signed a convention that both denominations could sweep it. On a hot summer day in 2002, a Coptic monk moved his chair from its agreed spot into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopians and eleven were hospitalized after the resulting fight. In another incident in 2004, during Orthodox celebrations of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a door to the Franciscan Chapel was left open. This was taken as a sign of disrespect by the Orthodox and a fistfight broke out. Some people were arrested, but no one was seriously injured. On Palm Sunday in April 2008, a brawl broke out when a Greek monk was ejected from the building by a rival faction. Police were called to the scene but were also attacked by the enraged brawlers. On Sunday, 9 November 2008, a clash erupted between Armenian and Greek monks during celebrations for the Feast of the Cross. == Issues with Israeli authorities ==

Tax and land disputes In February 2018, the church was closed following a tax dispute over of uncollected taxes on church properties. The Jerusalem city hall stressed that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and all other churches are exempt from the taxes, with the changes only affecting establishments like "hotels, halls and businesses" owned by the churches. There was a lock-in protest against an Israeli legislative proposal which would expropriate church lands that had been sold to private companies since 2010, a measure which church leaders assert constitutes a serious violation of their property rights and the Status Quo. In a joint official statement the church authorities protested what they considered to be the peak of a systematic campaign in: The 2018 taxation affair does not cover any church buildings or religious related facilities (because they are exempt by law), but commercial facilities such as the Notre Dame Hotel which was not paying the municipal property tax, and any land which is owned and used as a commercial land. The church leaders have said that such a bill will make it harder for them to sell church-owned lands. According to The Jerusalem Post: Land sale to Israeli settlers In 2017, NPR reported that the Greek Orthodox Church owns many properties across Jerusalem, Israel and the West Bank. It owns some 30% of the land in the Old City. But, due to property sales, these properties are diminishing every year. The decision to sell is made by Greek leaders, even though most local followers of the church are Arab Palestinians. The Palestinian Christians have raised concerns about selling these properties to Israeli settler-affiliated organizations. In June 2019, a number of Christian denominations in Jerusalem raised their voice against the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the sale of three properties by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to Ateret Cohanim – an organization that seeks to increase the number of Jews living in the Old City and East Jerusalem. The church leaders warned that if the organization gets to control the sites, Christians could lose access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In June 2022, the Supreme Court upheld the sale and ended the legal battle. Preventing Palm Sunday celebrations On 29 March 2026, the Latin Patriarch, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and the custos of the Holy Land, Fr. Francesco Ielpo, were en route to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre without a procession when Israeli authoraties stopped them from entering and thereby preventing the celebration of Palm Sunday. The Patriarchate later released a joint press release calling the incident "a grave precedent" which disrespects the Status Quo. The dispute stemmed from a safety measure that prohibited all religious gatherings of more than 50 people at Old City holy sites including the Western Wall, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Dome of the Rock. The safety precautions were instituted as a result of a missile strike days earlier due to the ongoing war with Iran. This event drew criticism from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez who both called it an attack against religious freedoms, from French President Emmanuel Macron who likewise condemned the move and said it came in the context of "the worrying increase in violations of the status of the Holy Places in Jerusalem", and from U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee who called the incident "an unfortunate overreach already having major repercussions around the world". The Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister Jose Manuel Albares has publicly said that this event "cannot happen again". Both the Italian and Spanish Prime Minister summoned their respective country's Israeli representative to answer for the incident, namely Jonathan Peled and Dana Erlich. The Israel Police later issued a statement confirming they have approved a limited prayer arrangement at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in coordination with a representative of the Latin Patriarch. Furthermore, Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, later clarified that a small contingent of Catholic leaders should have been allowed to enter the Church despite the safety concerns, and that the barring of their entry was “unfortunate.” ==Connection to Roman temple==

were built rather than the typical one, due to the awkward location of the Temple Mount, blocking the central east–west route. The site of the church had been a temple to Jupiter or Venus built by Hadrian before Constantine's edifice was built. Hadrian's temple had been located there because it was the junction of the main north–south road with one of the two main east–west roads and directly adjacent to the forum (now the location of the Muristan, which is smaller than the former forum). The forum itself had been placed, as is traditional in Roman towns, at the junction of the main north–south road with the other main east–west road (which is now El-Bazar/David Street). The temple and forum together took up the entire space between the two main east–west roads (a few above-ground remains of the east end of the temple precinct still survive in the Alexander Nevsky Church complex of the Russian Mission in Exile). From the archaeological excavations in the 1970s, it is clear that construction took over most of the site of the earlier temple enclosure and that the Triportico and Rotunda roughly overlapped with the temple building itself; the excavations indicate that the temple extended at least as far back as the Aedicule, and the temple enclosure would have reached back slightly further. Virgilio Canio Corbo, a Franciscan priest and archaeologist, who was present at the excavations, estimated from the archaeological evidence that the western retaining wall of the temple itself would have passed extremely close to the east side of the supposed tomb; if the wall had been any further west any tomb would have been crushed under the weight of the wall (which would be immediately above it) if it had not already been destroyed when foundations for the wall were made. ==Location==

, in The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia The New Testament describes Jesus's tomb as being outside the city wall, as was normal for burials across the ancient world, which were regarded as unclean. Today, the site of the Church is within the current walls of the old city of Jerusalem. It has been well documented by archaeologists that in the time of Jesus, the walled city was smaller and the wall then was to the east of the current site of the Church. In other words, the city had been much narrower in Jesus's time, with the site then having been outside the walls; since Herod Agrippa (41–44) is recorded by history as extending the city to the north (beyond the present northern walls), the required repositioning of the western wall is traditionally attributed to him as well. A recent archeological excavation conducted by Professor Francesca Romana Stasolla, found remains of olive trees and grapevines that are approximately 2,000 years old. These plant remnants, seeds and pollen, were discovered via archaeobotanical analysis performed on soil samples that had been extracted from beneath the stone floor of the church. The area immediately to the south and east of the sepulchre was a quarry and outside the city during the early first century as excavations under the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer across the street demonstrated. The church is a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Old City of Jerusalem. The Christian Quarter and the Armenian Quarter are both located in the northwestern and western part of the Old City, due to the fact that the Holy Sepulchre is located close to the northwestern corner of the walled city. The adjacent neighbourhood within the Christian Quarter is called the Muristan, a term derived from the Persian word for hospital, as Christian pilgrim hospices have been maintained in this area near the Holy Sepulchre since at least the time of Charlemagne. ==Influence==

From the ninth century onward, the construction of churches inspired by the Anastasis was extended across Europe. One example is Santo Stefano in Bologna, Italy, an agglomeration of seven churches recreating shrines of Jerusalem. Several churches and monasteries in Europe, for instance, in Germany and Russia, and at least one church in the United States have been wholly or partially modelled on the Church of the Resurrection, some even reproducing other holy places for the benefit of pilgrims who could not travel to the Holy Land. They include the ("Holy Tomb") of Görlitz, constructed between 1481 and 1504, the New Jerusalem Monastery in Moscow Oblast, constructed by Patriarch Nikon between 1656 and 1666, and Mount St. Sepulchre Franciscan Monastery built by the Franciscans in Washington, D.C. in 1898. Author Andrew Holt writes that the church was the most important in all Christendom at the time of the Crusades. ==See also==