St: Mark’s Church:

Known as the house of Mary, mother of John, called Mark and the first church of christianity. It is presently under the guardianship of Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church. The Syrian Orthodox tradition holds this to be the site of the 'upper room' where Jesus had his last last supper. The upper room is actually below the present church. It is here the holy spirit ascended upon the disciples during the pentecostal period. Here Peter took refuge after escaping from the prison in which he had been confined by Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12,12-17). During restoration work in the 1940s, a 6th century Aramaic inscription was discovered from the church and is displayed on the wall. The inscription reads “Proclaimed a church by the holy apostles under the name of the Virgin Mary, mother of God, after the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ into heaven. Renewed after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in the year A.D. 73”. The church preserves a very ancient portrait of the Virgin and infant Jesus, believed to be painted by Luke the Evangelist, and therefore the earliest authentic, icon of the Mother of God.