Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Built over the quarry that Christian tradition, backed by real archaeology, identifies as Golgotha and the garden tomb, the Holy Sepulchre has been destroyed, rebuilt and divided more times than any church on earth. Constantine's builders cut away the hillside in 326 to leave the tomb standing free; the Crusaders enclosed the whole complex under one roof in 1149. Today the Status Quo of 1757 freezes every lamp, step and stone between the Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Latin, Coptic, Syriac and Ethiopian communities. The immovable ladder on the facade has not moved since the eighteenth century.