Church of Notre Dame de Zion

Abstract

~Sisters of Our Lady of Zion Convent was built in 1860 by a converted Jew named Alphonse Ratisbonne, who reached Ein Kerem and decided to establish on the hill a church and a home for orphaned girls. Ratisbonne built an orphanage for girls and a convent for nuns from the Sisters of Our Lady of Zion Order. The compound is not used as an orphanage anymore. The central building that used to accommodate the girls serves now as guestrooms, and the building juxtapose to the church hosts the dining-room, the kitchen and the church's nunnery. In the apse's stained-glass windows, the images of Moses and Elijah are depicted. Among the paintings on the walls, the theme of the fourteen Stations of the Cross in the via dolorosa of Jesus is mentioned