Jerusalem - St Anne's Church

A few yards inside St Stephen's Gate in Jerusalem, to the right, is St Anne's Church, a completely preserved church of the Crusader period. It was built in 1142 by Avda, widow of Baldwin I, the first king of Jerusalem, on the spot where the house of Joachim and Anne, Mary's parents, was believed to have stood. In 1192, a year after his conquest of Jerusalem, Saladin converted the church into a Koranic school. In 1856, in gratitude for French support during the Crimean War, the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Majid presented it to Napoleon III, and the interior was cleared of later additions.

A good view of the exterior, particularly the triangular apse, the transept and the shallow dome, from the east can be obtained by climbing a flight of steps on the town wall to the north of St Stephen's Gate. The church is built of small blocks of dressed stone, with small windows. It is entered through a severe doorway with a pointed arch between two buttresses. In the tympanum is an Arabic inscription dating from the time when the church was used as a Koranic school. The upper of the two windows above the doorway has similar decoration to the doorway of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The interior of the church, a three-aisled basilica, is marked by austere monumentality. The nave, of three bays, is separated from the lower lateral aisles by arcades of pointed arches; the roof is groin-vaulted. There is a dome over the crossing, beyond which steps lead up to the sanctuary, with the high altar (by the French sculptor Philippe Kaeppelin, 1954). On the front of the altar are depicted the Nativity (left), the Descent from the Cross (center) and the Annunciation (right); on the left-hand end is the teaching of Mary by her mother, on the right- hand end her presentation in the Temple. The decorative elements in the church are completely subordinated to the architecture and are confined to the capitals. On the first pillar on the left is a small cask, on the first on the right two sandals surmounted by a scroll (perhaps symbolizing the marriage contract between Joachim and Anne). On other capitals are volutes and plant and leaf ornament, almost with the effect of Corinthian capitals. To the left of the principal apse is a human figure, to the right an ox (the attributes of the Evangelists Matthew and Luke), and on the semi-columns flanking the window in the apse are figures of animals.

In the south aisle is a flight of steps leading down to the crypt, in a grotto believed by the Crusaders to be Mary's birthplace (which according to tradition immediately adjoined the Pool of Bethesda).