The Church of the Holy Sepulchre marks Golgotha, also called Calvary, where Jesus was crucified. The location was first determined by Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, during a pilgrimage in 326 AD. Helena thought that Hadrian had erected a pagan temple to Venus and Jupiter on the site in order to divert Chris tians from their faith. She sponsored excavations which soon uncovered the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and three crosses, which she surmised had been hastily left there after the crucifixion as the Sabbath approached. Constantine built a winsome church over the site in 335, which was later destroyed by the Persians in 614, rebuilt, and again destroyed (this time by the Turks) in 1009. Part of Constantine’s church’s original foundations buttress the present Crusader structure, which dates from 1048. When the present building was erected, its architects decided to unite all the oratories, chapels, and other sanctuaries that had cropped up around the site under one monumental cross. By 1852, tremendous religious conflicts had developed within the Holy Sepulchre over such seemingly silly issues as who had the right to clean the doorstep. The uninterested Ottoman rulers divided the church among the Franciscan order and the Greek and Armenian Orthodox, Coptic, Syrian,a Ethiopian churches. The first three are the major shareholders, entitled to hold *? sSes and processions and to burn incense in their shrines and chapels, nne of the most venerated buildings on earth, the church is also !

somewhat pit. The bickering among the various denominations lends the structure some f its fascination and color but also has kept the building in shambles, marred by ° roetual construction. The effects of major fires in 1808 and 1949 and an earth-P ke in 1927 demanded a level of cooperation and a pooling of resources that Inild not be mustered. Restoration work in any part of the basilica implies owner-iijo making each sect hesitant to assist and eager to hinder the others. The result is that little, if anything, is ever accomplished. In 1935 the church was in such a precarious state that Britain desperately propped it up with girders and wooden reinforcement. Since I960, partial cooperation has allowed the supportive scaffolding to be gradually removed, but to this day the question of who gets to change a given light bulb can turn into a controversy that rages for months.

The sites in the church today bear little resemblance to those described in the Gospds. but discrepancies can be explained. The Gospels place Calvary outside the city walls in ancient times; the site is located on the second floor of the church, within today’s Ottoman city walls. At the time of Jesus, according to believers, the basilica’s Calvary site was indeed located outside the city walls-the extant walls were built centuries after Jesus’ crucifixion and encompass a larger area than the original walls.