Reconstructing the Hospitaller Church of St. John, Acre, with the Help of Gravier d’Ortières’s Drawing of 1685–1687

Abstract

By the end of the eighteenth century, the ruins of the Hospitaller Church of St. John in Acre were filled up to nave level with soil, so as to facilitate the construction of the Ottoman Serai.1 With some alterations, the builders adhered to the nave’s layout, yet the apse area was blocked by a building constructed to its east. The church has been partly excavated during the past fifty years. In the late 1950s, Zeev Goldmann cleared the undercroft and recorded some of the architectural details. Goldmann identified the main entrance at its western end. He proposed that a double flight of steps led up to the nave, located some 4 metres above the Frankish street level.2 Over the past six years, Eliezer Stern and Hanaa Abu-Uqsa of the Israel Antiquities Authority undertook three short campaigns, opening three loci at the nave level: one at the eastern end, which encloses the chancel screen area; another in the nave itself, where fragments of the nave columns were found; and the third at the western end, where the inner side of the main entrance and a grey marble doorstep came to light.3 The length of this marble piece is nearly 3 metres. The location of two of the crusader church windows can still be discerned on the northern and western facades (Fig. 1). Parts of the western facade survived almost to its full height, some 13 metres above current street level, mainly at the north-western corner. Not all of it is crusader masonry; but the entrance area clearly is: large, precisely cut stones appear on both its sides, and remains of what was formerly a cornice that surrounded the entire building’s exterior are still visible. It is also possible to identify the remains of two large pilasters which stood on both sides of the entrance (Fig. 2).