| The Church of the Assumption is in the lowest point of the Kidron Valley.
It is very easy to miss it, because its roof is about the same level as
the nearby road.
The original church The Church was built by the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I in the 4th century on the place, where Mary is believed to have been buried. Later the church was destroyed and rebuilt a number of times. The present, Romanesque style, edifice is from Crusader times. |
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| The shrine houses allegedly the tomb of Mary. This is considered the place of Mary's burial, after her remains had been brought from Mount Zion, and of her Assumption to Heaven. |  © Palphot |
| The interior of the tomb. |  © Palphot |
| This monument (the Tomb of Zechariah) is connected with the prophet Zechariah whom Joash, King of Judah, stoned to death (Chronicles II, 24:20-22). |  |
| Jews see great merit in being buried near the tomb of Zechariah and this has contributed to the development of the huge cemetery from here. |  |
| Absalom, a son of King David who rebelled against his father, "in his lifetime had taken and reared up for himself a pillar ... and he called the pillar after his own name." (Samuel II, 18:18) The monument on the photo is wrongly known as Absalom's Pillar. (However, it is of 1st century BCE---nearly a thousand years later the time of Absalom.) This belief had a curious effect that devout Jews, Muslims and Christian would throw stones at it whenever they passed by. |  |