The Empress Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, became a Christian and when her son called a meeting of all the Bishops from across the Roman Empire she met Macarius, Bishop of Aelia Capitolina, as Jerusalem was then known. Helena was troubled by the Bishop's story of the neglect of the sites associated with the life of Jesus and resolved, with her son's blessing, to visit the Holy Land.

Constantine decided to build a church in Jerusalem on the site of Golgotha and the nearby tomb. Building work started in 326 and the church was dedicated in 353.  This church was destroyed by the Persians in 614 but soon, in part, reconstructed. In 1010 it was again destroyed by the Caliph Hakim of Egypt and rebuilt in 1048 by the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine Monomachus. The basilica and the atrium were lost for ever in this rebuilding and only the courtyard and the rotunda remained. In 1144 the Crusaders rebuilt the entire church in, essentially, its present form. It was completed in 1149.

Today it is a building of many moods. In the early morning it is quiet and almost deserted, apart from the streams of worshippers who come to the succession of liturgies. By mid-morning it is crowded with visitors and wave upon wave of pilgrim groups passing through. Even so in quiet corners a Russian nun or an Ethiopian monk will be praying. And anyone who takes the time to penetrate into the remoter parts of the church can find solitude.

The Holy Land scholar Jerome Murphy-O'Connor summed up the dilemma in his book The Holy Land -

One expects the central shrine of Christendom to stand out in majestic isolation, but anonymous buildings cling to it like barnacles. One looks for numinous light, but it is dark and cramped. One hopes for peace but the ear is assailed by a cacophony of warring chants. One desires holiness, only to encounter a jealous possessiveness: the six groups of occupants - Latin Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Ethiopians - watch one another suspiciously for any infringement of rights. The frailty of man is nowhere more apparent than here; it epitomizes the human condition. The empty who come to be filled will leave desolate; those who permit the church to question them may begin to understand why hundreds of thousands thought it worthwhile to risk death or slavery in order to pray here.

The building has a battered and yet lived-in appearance. Half of the double door into the church was blocked after the fall of Jerusalem to the Muslims in 1187. The new rulers were determined to exercise control over Christian entry to the church. Immediately inside is the Stone of Unction, which commemorates the anointing of Jesus before his burial. A stone on this site is first recorded in the 12th century and the present one dates from 1810. To the right are steps leading to Golgotha. The floor is at the level of the top of the rocky outcrop of Calvary. There are two chapels - the Latin and the Greek. In the Latin chapel the altar is 15th century bronze work, made in Florence. Under the altar of the Greek chapel there is a round hole which permits the touching of the actual rock of Calvary.

Directly beneath the Greek chapel is the Chapel of Adam, reached from the entrance level. Here a window gives a view of the rock of Calvary and it was also here that the tombs of the first two Crusader rulers - Godrey de Bouillon and Baldwin1 - stood. They were removed by the Greeks in 1809, during a reconstruction of the Church after a fire in 1808.

The Tomb of Jesus stands under the rotunda. The tomb monument, which has been described as a "hideous kiosk", dates from the 19th century. The fire of 1808 having damaged the monument built in the 11th century to replace the fourth century tomb, destroyed by the Caliph Hakim in 1009. Recent excavation work has, however, revealed that parts of the original tomb still exist.

Parts of the outer 4th century wall of the rotunda can be seen in the Syrian Chapel and in the ambulatory in the apse of the Crusader Church, now the Greek Catholican. A flight of steps here give access to the Chapel of Saint Helena. On the walls on either side of the steps are mediaeval crosses carved by pilgrims. The Chapel itself is under the control of the Armenians and dates from the 12th century. The stairs on the right of the chapel lead down to a cistern in which the Empress Helena is said to have discovered the true cross. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, however, points out that there is doubt about this tradition as it was first mentioned 16 years after the church was completed.