The Chapel of Saint Ananias
A two-room underground chapel in the Christian quarter of Damascus, 5-6 metres below street level, held to be where Paul was baptised. How to find it, what to see.
- Opening hours
- Open through the day, may close at midday; hours shift with the season
- Entry
- Varies — check at the door
- Duration
- 20 minutes
- Best time
- Morning, before the groups — the stair takes one person at a time
- Period
- Early Christian · Byzantine foundations
- Address
- Christian quarter, inside the eastern wall, Old City, Damascus
At the eastern edge of the Christian quarter, 5-6 metres below the present street, a chapel of two small rooms. Tradition holds this to be the house of Ananias — the man who, in Acts 9, found Saul after he lost his sight on the road to Damascus, restored it and baptised him. You go down a stone stair and pass under the ground level the city has built up over two thousand years. It is the smallest and barest place of worship in Damascus, and the crowds have not found it.
Getting there
Walk north from Bab Sharqi, inside the eastern wall: 250 metres, 4 minutes. The door is narrow and low, the sign small — what you are looking for is not a church front but a single-leaf door set into a wall. Coming from Bab Touma you drop southeast through the quarter, about the same distance.
How long it takes
20 minutes. The chapel is two rooms and there is no circuit to walk; what stretches the visit is a service, or a group blocking the stair. A small charge is taken at the door and the amount changes often, so carry cash.
What to see
Two vaulted rooms at the foot of the stair. Bare stone walls, a low ceiling, no windows; the light comes from lamps. A plain stone altar stands in the inner room and services are held there. Along the wall of the outer room, relief panels tell the sequence: the fall on the road to Damascus, the sight restored, the baptism. The Franciscans keep the chapel open. Its present form comes out of 20th century restoration, and sources trace the stonework beneath it to the early Christian centuries.
The story attached to it
Saul travels to Damascus to round up Christians, is thrown to the ground on the road and loses his sight. He spends three days in a house on Straight Street. Ananias is told to go and find him; he goes, lays his hand on him, Saul sees again and is baptised. Then comes the escape: with the gates watched, he is let down the wall in a basket — a story attached to Bab Kisan, 650 metres to the south. Ananias is counted as the first bishop of Damascus.
Do not miss
Stand at the foot of the stair and look up. The door you came through is 5-6 metres above you, and the gap is Damascus itself, two thousand years of it: the chapel floor sits at the Roman street level and today’s street runs above it. Most visitors go down, look at the altar, and never turn round to the stair.
Tips
- A place of worship: cover shoulders and knees, no photographs during a service
- The stair is narrow and the steps are worn, with no handrail — keep to the wall going down
- It is dim and windowless inside; a phone camera struggles with most frames
- Bab Kisan is 650 metres south and carries the other end of the same story — walk the two together
