The Garden Tomb Jerusalem

About this audio guide

The Garden Tomb in Jerusalem's Old City centers on a moment in 1883, when British general Charles Gordon stood on a rooftop, stared at a bare rock face, and became convinced its two dark hollows and stone ridge marked the site of Christ's crucifixion. The guide traces how Gordon, already a national hero and a religious mystic, linked that skull-shaped crag to a rock-cut tomb found nearby by a farmer digging a cistern, and how the idea took hold as Gordon's Calvary. It lingers at the tomb's doorway, where a groove in the rock still marks where believers say a stone once rolled away.