Dormition Abbey - Hagia Maria

Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion opens with the 1967 Six-Day War, when gunfire scarred a mosaic above its altar, then reaches back to how the building came to be there. The guide follows Kaiser Wilhelm II's 1898 visit to Jerusalem, the Ottoman sultan's sale of this hilltop to German Catholics, and the fortress-like basilica raised between 1900 and 1910. It also takes you into the crypt, where a carved figure of Mary lies beneath a dome ringed with mosaics of biblical women.