Church of All Nations, Jerusalem (must see)

The Church of All Nations, also called the Basilica of the Agony, stands on the ground traditionally linked to one of the most intense moments in the Christian story: the night Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest.

This site has seen more than its fair share of drama. A 4th-century church once stood here, only to be flattened by an earthquake in 747. The Crusaders tried again, building a new church that deliberately wrapped itself around three rocky outcrops-an architectural nod to the three prayers described in the Gospels. Consecrated in 1170, it held on for a while, then slowly slipped into ruin after 1345, as Jerusalem’s fortunes shifted once more.

The building you see today is very much a 20th-century comeback story. Excavations uncovered earlier layers, and Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi was brought in to design a new church that respected what came before. Completed in 1924, it was funded by twelve different nations, which explains both the name and the twelve small golden domes overhead, each stamped with a national coat of arms.

Inside, the mood is deliberately subdued. At the center of the nave lies a bare rock from the Byzantine period, ringed by a wrought-iron crown of thorns. Above it, the apse mosaic shows Christ in anguish, flanked by scenes of his arrest and Judas’s betrayal. If you look down, black marble lines trace the footprint of the earlier Byzantine church, with fragments of its original mosaic floor still peeking through.

Outside, the façade delivers its message loud and clear: a large gilded mosaic of the Agony stares back across the Kidron Valley. Nearby, an open-air altar set among the olive trees hosts services for an unusually wide mix of Christian communities-Catholic, Orthodox, Armenian, Protestant, Anglican, and more. Different traditions, different languages, same setting. On the Mount of Olives, that kind of shared space feels less like an exception and more like the point.