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DIMITRY BOBROFF / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

MOUNT OF OLIVES. Mentioned repeatedly in the Gospels, the Mount of Olives was the site of several stories about Jesus, including his teaching on the mountain (Mark 13:3–37) and his final ascension to heaven (Acts 1:9–12). Accordingly, Constantine erected two churches to commemorate these events. The Church of the Ascension, whose ruins are found beneath a medieval Islamic shrine that preserves the same tradition (see the domed monument pictured above in foreground), was built atop the mountain’s summit, supposedly on the spot where Jesus’s ascent left footprints in the rock. The Eleona Church, which was a standard basilica built above a cave where tradition held that Jesus taught his disciples, was revealed beneath the modern Pater Noster Church (identified by the cross-topped spire in the photo), just a few hundred feet from the site of the ascension. The two churches likely formed a single complex in the fourth century.