In the first century BC,
Herod the Great built a
large open-air pool. In the second century,
Roman Emperor Hadrian added arched
vaulting to enable pavement to be placed over the pool, making it a large cuboid
cistern to gather rainwater from
guttering on the
forum buildings. On the surface, Hadrian built a triple-arched gateway as an
entrance to the eastern forum of the
Aelia Capitolina in Jerusalem. The northern arch is preserved under the
apse of the Basilica of Ecce Homo. By 1857,
Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne, a French Jew and former atheist who converted to Catholicism and became a priest, decided to purchase the site and start a convent. Between 1858 and 1862, he built a
basilica (the Church of Ecce Homo), which overlaps part of the gateway arch. He also built an
orphanage for girls and other standard convent buildings. A school for girls has been added with boarders coming from all over the Arab world till 1967. As the convent was confined in size, the
nuns bought a few of the surrounding Arab homes and incorporated them into the convent; they soon opened a
medical dispensary on the site. Due to the introduction of
state support for orphans, by the
Ottoman government and later (1948) by the
Israeli government, the orphanage buildings have been used for other religious purposes since 1967. The convent now maintains a guesthouse and library. '': Roman pavement once thought to be the site of
Jesus' trial. Beneath the convent is an extensive area of Roman
flagstones. As these continue, to a lesser extent, under the
Church of the Condemnation, they have been known for several centuries. Due in part to an etching of a game by Roman soldiers discovered in 1864 involving the execution of a "mock king", the flagstones were thought by nuns to be those of
Gabbatha, which describes as the location where
Pontius Pilate adjudged
Jesus' trial. It is possible that following its destruction the Antonia Fortress's pavement tiles were brought to Hadrian's plaza. ==See also==