Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, is a fourth-century church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is considered to be the holiest site for Christians in the world and has been the most important pilgrimage site for Christians since the fourth century.

According to traditions dating back to the fourth century, it contains both the site where Jesus was crucified at Calvary or Golgotha, and the location of Jesus' empty tomb, where he was buried and resurrected. Both locations are considered immensely holy sites by Christians. In earlier times, the site was used as a Jewish burial ground, upon which a pagan temple was built. The church and rotunda, built under Constantine in the 4th century and destroyed by al-Hakim in 1009, were later reconstructed with modifications by Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and the Crusaders, resulting in a significant departure from the original structure. The tomb itself is enclosed by a 19th-century shrine called the Aedicule.

Within the church proper are the last four stations of the Cross of the Via Dolorosa, representing the final episodes of the Passion of Jesus. The church has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination since its creation in the fourth century, as the traditional site of the resurrection of Christ, thus its original Greek name, Church of the Anastasis ('Resurrection').

The Status Quo, an understanding between religious communities dating to 1757, applies to the site. Control of the church itself is shared among several Christian denominations and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for over 160 years, and some for much longer. The main denominations sharing property over parts of the church are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopian Orthodox churches.