This is part of Reason's 2025 summer travel issue. Click here to read the rest of the issue.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, traditionally identified as the site of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, is shared by half a dozen denominations under a baroque "status quo" agreement signed in 1757. The agreement, which could be viewed as an attempt to reduce conflict by establishing something like property rights, aimed to prevent interdenominational violence, which nevertheless occasionally breaks out between clerics with contradictory views of the prerogatives assigned to each group.
Near the church's entrance is a conspicuous symbol of that uneasy arrangement: a three-century-old wooden ladder that connects a ledge to an upper-level window. Although that section of the building is assigned to the Armenian Apostolic Church, no one is allowed to mess with the "immovable ladder," lest all hell break loose.
