Mount Zion, Jerusalem

From here the road runs north to the Dung Gate and northwest to the Zion Gate. Turning left shortly before reaching the Zion Gate and then taking the first street on the right, we come to Mount Zion, with its Jewish, Christian and Muslim shrines. In Herodian times the hill lay within the upper town. Since the fourth century, as is demonstrated by churches built at that time, this has been revered as the place where Christ celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples and instituted the Eucharist (Matthew 26,17-30; Mark 14,12-25; Luke 22,7-20), where the Holy Ghost descended on the apostles at Pentecost (Acts 2), and where - as first affirmed by Patriarch Modestus in the seventh century - the Virgin spent the last years of her life and died.

Picture - Statue over looking the Grave Yard on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

Picture - Dormition Abbey at Mount Zion.

View a slideshow of Mount Zion Pictures

The tomb of King David has been revered on Mount Zion since the 12th century, though it should rather be looked for in the old City of David on Mount Ophel. The churches built in the fourth and fifth centuries were in a state of ruin when the Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem in 1099. They rebuilt the old Minster of Zion and built a two-story Romanesque house with the Room of the Washing of the Feet on the ground floor and the Room of the Last Supper on the upper floor. The church and the Room of the Last Supper were destroyed by the Egyptians in 1219, but the Room of the Last Supper was rebuilt in its present Gothic form by the Franciscans, to whom Pope Clement IV granted custody of the room in 1342. The Franciscans also built a small friary to the south of this. In the 16th century Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent expelled the Franciscans and a mosque was installed on the site. These older buildings were joined at the turn of the century by the Church of the Dormition, built on a site acquired by the German Emperor William II and presented by him to the German Catholic Society of the Holy Land. At that time the Tomb of David was specially opened for the Emperor and Empress on the Sultan's command: Jews and Christians normally had no access to the tomb, and this remained the case until the British Mandate after the First World War.