St. Anne's church and the Pool of Bethesda

The Church of St. Anne is a 12th-century Crusader church of Romanesque architecture, built between 1131 and 1138, and erected over the traditional site of the birthplace of Anne (Hannah), the mother of Mary. In 1192, Saladin turned the church into a Muslim theological school, which is commemorated in an inscription above the church's entrance. It was restored in the 19th and 20th centuries, but most of what remains today is original.



The church is right next to the Bethesda Pool, believed to be the site where Jesus healed a paralytic (John 5:1-15). There are also ruins of a Roman temple to the god of medicine and remains of a Byzantine church built over the temple.

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie--the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?"

"Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me."

Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked." John 5:1-9