Church of the Holy Sepulchre

About this audio guide

This guide to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem starts with a small wooden ladder wedged above the entrance that nobody has moved since at least 1728, and uses it to explain how six Christian communities share ownership of the building under an old Ottoman rule called the Status Quo. It also traces the unusual arrangement by which two Muslim families, the Nuseibehs and the Joudehs, have held the church's key and door for roughly eight centuries. Look up at that ladder before you step inside.