Gethsemane

Located in the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem where, according to the four Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus underwent the agony in the garden and was arrested before his crucifixion. It is a place of great resonance in Christianity. There are several small olive groves in church property, all adjacent to each other and identified with biblical Gethsemane.

History: The Garden of Gethsemane became a focal site for early Christian pilgrims. It was visited in 333 A.D by the anonymous “Pilgrim of Bordeaux”, whose Itinerarium Burdigalense is the earliest description left by a Christian traveler in the Holy Land. In his Onomasticon, Eusebius of Caesarea notes the site of Gethsemane located “at the foot of the Mount of Olives”, and he adds that “the faithful were accustomed to go there to pray”. Eight ancient olive trees growing in the Latin site of the garden may be 900 years old (see § Olive trees). In 1681 Croatian knights of the Holy Order of Jerusalem, Paul, Antun and James bought the Gethsemane Garden and donated it to the Franciscan community, which owns it to this day. A three-dimensional plate on the right side next to the entrance to the garden describes the aforementioned gift to the community.

The Olive Trees: Made by the same parent plant, 3 of the trees known to science as the oldest trees in the world. Dates of AD 1092, 1166 and 1198 were obtained by carbon dating from older parts of the trunks of three trees.