The Armenian Patriarchate and Cathedral, the largest conventual enclosure in Palestine, occupies with its hospices, schools and gardens the greater part of the south-western quarter of the old city. The Cathedral of S. James the Less, with its rich treasury, is of considerable interest, and is lined with Kutahia tiles of an unusual figured type.[1]
Within the Armenian compound is shown an interesting old chapel regarded as occupying the site of the house of Annas; while to the south of the Zion Gate is the Armenian Monastery of Mt. Zion with the traditional house of Caiaphas and the tombs of the Armenian Patriarchs of Jerusalem. The house of Annas is also known as the "Convent of the Olive Tree" (from a very old olive believed to have sprung from the tree to which Christ was bound), and, together with the house of Caiaphas, is decorated with tiles similar to those of the Cathedral.
The Caenaculum or Tomb of David (al-Nebi Daud), to the south of the Zion Gate, is a venerable shrine known in the Middle Ages as "Mater Ecclesiarum" because considered to be the house of the Virgin Mary and the place where the Last Supper was celebrated. The existing monument is a Gothic church built, probably by Cypriote masons, in the middle of the fourteenth century; after being in the possession of the Augustinian Canons and afterwards of the Franciscans, it passed in 1547 into the hands of the Moslems, in whose ownership it has remained. The "Upper Chamber" is accessible to non-Moslem visitors, but the lower room, alleged to contain the Tomb of David, is shown only to Moslems.
The Valley of Jehoshaphat (Valley of the Kidron; Wadi Sitti Maryam) runs along the eastern boundary of the city, which it separates from the Mount of Olives, and has been from time immemorial the burial-place of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Of particular interest are the Jewish monuments of uncertain dates known as the Tomb of Absalom (a remarkable rock-cube surmounted by a superstructure
- ↑ These tiles are described and illustrated in C. A. Nomicos, Τὰ Χριστιανικὰ Κεραμουργήματα τοῦ Ἀρμενικοῦ Πατριαρχείου τῶν Ἱεροσολύμων, Alexandria, 1922.
