St. Anne's Church

About St. Anne's Church

The Church of Saint Ann or Anne, St. Ann's Church, St. Anne's Roman Catholic Church or variations may refer to:

The Church of Saint Anne is a French Catholic church in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Al-Quds, beside Lions' Gate (Bab al-Asbat) at the start of the Via Dolorosa, and part of the French national domain in the Holy Land. The Crusaders built it between 1131 and 1138 on the site of an earlier Byzantine church, at the spot traditionally held to be the home of Anne and Joachim, the parents of the Virgin Mary. After Salah ad-Din retook the city he turned the building into a school of Islamic law, al-Madrasa al-Salahiyya, a name the site still carries; the Arabic foundation inscription survives above the entrance. The church later fell into ruin until the Ottomans gave it to France in 1856, and it was restored to use. It is among the purest examples of Crusader Romanesque architecture in the city and is famous for its remarkable acoustics, which draw pilgrim groups to sing inside. In the grounds are the extensive remains of the Pool of Bethesda, where the Gospel of John records Jesus healing a paralysed man, together with the ruins of curative baths and a Roman temple to the god of medicine, in layers reaching from before the Christian era to the Middle Ages.

Where:

Jerusalem, Palestine