Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher

The greatest shrine of the Christian world, the guardians of which are six confessions at once, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the main purpose of visiting the Holy Land for many thousands of pilgrims and tourists from all over the world. Under one roof, this grandiose spiritual and architectural complex unites the places where the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ took place, as well as the subsequent Finding of the Life-giving Cross, on which He was crucified to atone for human sins.

The center of the entire temple is the Kuvuklia or the Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher - the place of Christ's Resurrection. It was here that the Savior was buried and resurrected on the third day. Every year, on Great Saturday, preceding Orthodox Easter, the Holy Fire mysteriously descends into Kuvuklia, from which the Jerusalem Patriarch praying here at these hours lights bunches of candles and passes them through two windows outside to those in the church. From here, the Holy Fire, carefully preserved in special lamps, is transported all over the world. There are always a lot of people in Kuvuklia, both on holidays and on weekdays, so the Greek monks carrying obedience here do not allow anyone to be at the Holy Sepulcher for more than a minute. Although exceptions were made - for example, for the restorers who worked here. Recently, in Cuvuklia, special large-scale restoration work, in which, for the first time in almost half a millennium, the slab was removed from the Holy Sepulcher. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Kuvuklia, first erected under Constantine the Great, is the most damaged part of the temple. It was destroyed by Muslims, suffered from fires and earthquakes - but was rebuilt each time. The last reconstruction was completed here in 1997.

The Holy Sepulcher is a typical tomb carved into natural rock from the Second Temple period. The body of Christ was laid on a stone burial Bed (200 × 80 cm, height from the floor 60 cm) according to religious tradition: feet to the east (to the entrance), head to the west. For a long time, the Lodge has been badly damaged by the unreasonable jealousy of the pilgrims, who at any cost tried to chop off and take with them a particle of the relic. To prevent these attempts, the Holy Lodge was covered with a slab of white marble, which has now turned yellow with age (the present slab was laid in 1555). Several centuries ago, the slab cracked across. There is a legend connected with this crack that it miraculously arose when Muslims wanted to take a marble slab to decorate the mosque. The appearance of a crack stopped the Muslims, and the slab remained in its place.

Initially, the Lodge existed around a burial cave, but it was destroyed along with the temple in 1009 by order of the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim. Only the Lodge itself, part of the cave walls (up to 60-90 cm high) and part of the entrance have survived. Now the cave is replaced by a small room (1.93 × 2.07 m) arranged inside the Cuvuklia, almost half of which, to the right of the entrance, at the northern wall, is occupied by the Lodge. It can accommodate three, at most four people at a time. The current building, like the former cave, is also called the Holy Sepulcher. From the east, from the chapel of the Angel, a low arched entrance leads into it (only 112 × 72 cm and about 90 cm deep), obviously of an original nature, according to most archaeologists.