Pool of Bethesda

John describes a pool with five porticoes near the Sheep Gate, and for a long time sceptics treated the detail as symbolic. Excavation beside the Church of St Anne uncovered exactly that: two large reservoirs divided by a central platform, colonnades on four sides and one across the middle — five porticoes.

Around the pools lie the layers of everything that came after: a Roman healing shrine, a Byzantine basilica, a Crusader church whose acoustics still draw pilgrim choirs.