The Original Narthex of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
Location – The Church of the Holy Sepulcher
Map Coordinates - 31.778645, 35.230879
The original Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built starting in the year 326 AD, having been commissioned by the Empress Helena one year earlier. When it was dedicated ten years later, this church was about three times larger than the current Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Almost all of the remnants of this original church are gone, having been destroyed in 1009 AD by a mad Caliph from Egypt. But there is one part - a complete room that wasn’t destroyed - a room that is still preserved in its original state. It’s the Narthex or the original entry point or receiving room of the Byzantine Church. That room still exists, but it is a closed to the public.
However, between 2006 and 2008 AD I was given special access to this room, and from my research I can now thoroughly describe it to you.
The Narthex shares a common wall with a bakery on Beit HaBad Street (formerly the Cardo Maximus in the Roman makeover of the city). Through a vault in the back of this bakery one could, back then, enter the Narthex of the first Church ever commissioned in the Holy Land.
Entering the Narthex.
Upon going through the vault door in the bakery, we saw exactly what we saw on the Madaba map - three steps, and three arched doors leading into the Narthex. Imagine - this the way that literally everyone in the world entered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher between the years 336 AD and 1009 AD - a period of lasting almost seven centuries.
The pillars in the original church were not round, as you see today in the Crusaders reconstruction. In the Byzantine church the pillars were square, and that’s what you see here in the original narthex.
When I visited the narthex, believe it or not, it was being used as nothing more than a storage room for the bakery, and I suppose that easy access to this room could be created from the crypt of the Alexander Nevsky Russian Compound next door. But for now, this breathtaking peek into history is hidden from the public, and it is only a matter of time before the world will, once again, be allowed to see the narthex of the original Church of the Holy Sepulcher that is still intact.