St. Anne Church

St. Anne Church is a Roman Catholic church located in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The church is around the pool of Bethesda. Currently it belongs to the French government.

According to the Byzantine tradition, the crypt is in the place where the house of Anne and Joachim was located, the parents of the Virgin Mary. The temple is a Byzantine church built in the days of Empress Eudocia. The church was destroyed during the Persian invasion of 614, and after the reconstruction it was destroyed again in 1009 by al-Hakim. The present church is Romanesque style and was built by the Knights of the Cross in 1140 to dedicate it to Saint Anne. After the conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin, the church became a school of Islamic law.

In 1856, after the Crimean War the church of Sultan Abd-al-Majid was handed to France in recognition of his support to Turkey. The church was restored by the French state and in 1877 was ceded to Charles Martial Lavigerie and his Society of Missionaries of Africa. Between 1882 and 1946 the church hosted a seminar for the training of Greek Catholic priests.