Mount Zion is a hill southwest of the Old City of Jerusalem. It contains three important religious sites.
Attractions:
History
All three religious sites share a long history. Rather than write the same history for each entry, I’ll cover it here:
The Church of Zion, which was a church or synagogue that may have belonged to a sect of Jewish Christians, stood on the site from the early 2nd to 4th centuries. Roman Emperor Theodosius I later built Hagia Sion, a Christian basilica, between 379 and 384. The basilica was damaged by the Sassanids in 614, repaired, and destroyed in 1009 by Caliph Al-Hakim.
The Crusaders built a cathedral on the site in the 12th century, but it was destroyed shortly after. Only the building containing King David’s Tomb and the Cenacle survived.
Syrian Christians maintained the building until the 1332, when it was purchased by the Franciscans. They managed it until 1524, when the Ottomans turned it into a mosque. Christians and Jews weren’t able to access the building until the creation of the State of Israel. King David’s Tomb was transformed from a mosque into a synagogue after the 1947-1949 Palestine War. The building is now managed by the Diaspora Yeshiva.
