The Memorial of Saint Paul in Tabbaleh, Damascus

South-east of Bab Kisan and Bab Sharqi, outside the wall, lies the Tabbaleh and Duwayla quarter, and inside it stands a tent-shaped church. The shape is not an accident: Paul was a tentmaker, and the building refers to his trade. This is the Memorial of Saint Paul. Tradition places his conversion here, and the church is a pilgrim stop run by the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land.

Getting there

Leave by Bab Kisan and walk south-east. The quarter outside the wall does not look like the old city: wide streets, modern buildings. You recognise the church by its roof, which slopes down towards the ground like a tent, and nothing else in the quarter looks like it.

What to see

Inside, the windows are the thing to look at. The window behind the altar shows Paul preaching; the three stained-glass windows in the nave show, in order, his vision, his baptism and his escape from the city. The building reads out his days in Damascus in sequence, and the other end of that sequence is Bab Kisan, on the wall, where he is said to have been lowered in a basket. The cave at the centre of the tradition lies below today’s street level.

Why here

The conversion is told in Acts 9, but the text gives no address: it happens as Paul approaches Damascus, somewhere outside the city. Tradition puts that somewhere here. An older tradition points instead to Kawkab, 15 kilometres south-west of Damascus, so you are not obliged to choose between the two addresses; both belong to the same account. A small chapel was built on this spot in 1925. After Pope Paul VI visited the Holy Land the new church went up at his encouragement and was consecrated in 1971, then repaired during the Year of Paul in 2009.

What not to miss

The two buildings beside the church. One is a house of formation, used by the Catholic bishops’ conference of the Middle East as well; the other is the Casa Nova pilgrim house, also founded on Paul VI’s initiative. Since the civil war that guesthouse has worked as shelter rather than as a pilgrim house, mostly for families who need medical care. And do not confuse the two Paul sites: the chapel on the wall is a separate building, not this church.