Jerusalem - En Karem

En Karem Road in Jerusalem runs down into the En Karem valley (4km/2.5mi). According to a Christian tradition going back at least as far as the fifth or sixth century the village of En Karem was the home of Zacharias and Elizabeth, where Mary visited her pregnant cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1,39-56) and where Elizabeth's son John the Baptist was born (Luke 1,57-66). From the main road a street on the right leads to the Franciscan friary of St John.

The church was built in the 17th century over the Grotto of St John, traditionally John's birthplace. In another grotto near the entrance to the church is a mosaic of the fifth or sixth century depicting peacocks and doves, with a Greek inscription "Greetings to God's martyr". The church has fine wrought-iron screens. Steps lead down to the crypt, the Grotto of St John, with a marble slab bearing the inscription "Hic praecursor Domini natus est" ("Here the forerunner of the Lord was born"). Round the walls are reliefs of scenes from the life of John the Baptist. On the opposite side of the main street, in the center of the village, is a spring which has been known since Crusader times as the Spring of the Virgin. Beside it is a mosque, abandoned since the Arab population left the village in 1948. Steps lead up to the Franciscan Church of the Visitation, on the site of the house in which Mary is believed to have visited Elizabeth. The two- storey modern church, with a mosaic of the Visitation on the façade, was built over the ruins of a church of the Crusader period. In the lower church is an ancient cistern. The upper church preserves part of the apse of the Crusader church, beside which are crosses scratched in the stone by pilgrims. The furnishings of the church are modern. From the Spring of the Virgin a narrow rocky path runs up the hill to a convent of Russian nuns with a small colorful church. Above the group of houses is an unfinished basilica.