Sacred Sites

Gethsemane

Christian Sites

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Gethsemane." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://divinity.interactivelion.com/sacred-sites/gethsemane.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Gethsemane. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://divinity.interactivelion.com/sacred-sites/gethsemane

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-gethsemane,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Gethsemane},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://divinity.interactivelion.com/sacred-sites/gethsemane},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Origin A church stood here in the 4th century

A walled olive grove on the lower slope of the Mount of Olives, identified as the garden where Jesus prayed on the night of his arrest, and the quietest of the major Jerusalem sites. The Franciscan Church of All Nations stands over an outcrop of bedrock left deliberately bare in front of the altar, which is what people come to touch. Several communions keep their own Gethsemane a short walk apart (the Latin garden, the Greek Orthodox one, the Russian Orthodox convent of Saint Mary Magdalene with its gilded onion domes, and the Tomb of the Virgin below), so the place is less a single site than a hillside of parallel devotions.

Facts

Site

Type of Site

Church, cathedral or chapel 1

Type of Site

Sacred grove or forest 1

Type of Site Detail

Eight ancient olive trees still growing in the garden have been radiocarbon dated to at least the twelfth century, making them contemporaries of the Crusader era rather than of Jesus, though an olive tree can regrow from its own rootstock after being cut, so an older tree could in principle underlie each one. The Church of All Nations that stands there today, completed in 1924 to a design by the Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi, takes its name from the twelve countries whose donations funded its construction. 1

Geography

Latitude

31.8 degrees north 3

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; this marks the site's general location for a map, not a survey-grade or precise boundary measurement.

Longitude

35.2 degrees east 3

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; this marks the site's general location for a map, not a survey-grade or precise boundary measurement.

Attributions

Tradition

Christian 1

Origins

Origin Period

A church stood here in the 4th century 1

Origin Period

The Church of All Nations was built on its foundations in 1919-1924 1

Country

Israel 1

Region

The Levant 1

Status

Status Today

In active religious use 1

UNESCO World Heritage

Not Inscribed 2

Outside the walled boundary of Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls, which coincides with the Walls of Suleyman the Magnificent. Verified live 2026-08-08.

Location

Learn More

A Hillside of Parallel Gardens

Gethsemane, an olive grove on the lower slope of the Mount of Olives facing the Old City of Jerusalem, is where the Gospels place Jesus at prayer on the night of his arrest, and it is the quietest of the great Jerusalem sites.

The garden of the agony

The Gospels describe Jesus withdrawing to Gethsemane with his disciples after the Last Supper, praying in anguish that the coming ordeal might pass from him while his companions slept, and being arrested there after Judas' betrayal. The name means roughly "oil press", fitting for an olive grove. The scene, the agony in the garden, is among the most meditated moments of the Passion, and it is the reason pilgrims come to touch the rock at the site.

The Church of All Nations

The Franciscan Church of All Nations, built in the early twentieth century over the remains of earlier churches, stands at the traditional place of the prayer. Before its altar an outcrop of bedrock is left deliberately bare, held to be the rock on which Jesus prayed, and it is this that visitors reach out to touch. Ancient olive trees in the adjacent garden are pointed out to pilgrims, though no tree can be shown to date to the first century.

Many communions on one slope

Several Christian communions keep their own Gethsemane within a short walk: the Latin garden and church, a Greek Orthodox site, the Russian Orthodox convent of St Mary Magdalene with its gilded onion domes, and the Tomb of the Virgin below, venerated as the burial place of Mary. The result is less a single site than a hillside of parallel devotions, each tradition marking the same night in its own place, and it remains an active, and comparatively contemplative, place of Christian pilgrimage.

Old, but Probably Not That Old

Gethsemane's oldest olive trees are popularly said to have witnessed the events described in the gospels, a claim that scientific dating has not been able to confirm quite that far back.

Old, but probably not that old

Scientific studies, including radiocarbon and ring analysis of several of the garden's ancient olive trees, have generally dated the oldest surviving trunks to several hundred years old, considerably short of the roughly two thousand years that would be needed to place them at the events of the gospel narrative. Because olive trees can regenerate from their own root systems even after a trunk dies or is cut, some researchers note the underlying root stock could theoretically be much older than any single visible trunk, though this remains difficult to verify directly.

What the gospels describe happening here

The gospel accounts describe Jesus praying in anguish at Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion, asking that his coming suffering be spared him while accepting it as necessary, before being arrested after Judas identified him to soldiers with a kiss, an episode that has made the garden one of the most visited sites associated with the Passion narrative specifically for this single, emotionally direct scene.

As this entry's companion article covers

The presence of multiple denominationally separate garden plots, each maintained by a different church and each presented to visitors as the authentic site, is addressed directly in this entry's companion article rather than repeated here.

Cross-Tradition Connections