The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 2017.
Photo credit:Gary Bembridge/Flickr
Below is another photograph taken eleven years earlier, in 2007.
Curiously, the ladder was still there.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 2007.
Photo credit:Dan/Flickr
And another photograph from more than thirty years ago.
It stands on the exact same spot.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1987.
Photo credit:Barbara Ann Spengler/Flickr
In fact, the ladder appears in every photo taken of the church.
And before the age of photography, it featured on sketches, paintings and engravings.
Nobody knows for sure how the ladder got up there and when.
The first written account mentioning the ladder, however, didnt come by for another thirty years.
But why wasnt the ladder taken down once the work was done?
Illustration of the window and the ladder, circa 1874 and 1878
A photo of the church from 1895.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, circa 1890-1900.
Deciding who gets to manage which site has been a source of great conflict over the centuries.
Certain places went to the Muslims, some went to the Jews, but most went to the Christians.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre holds great significance for every Christian denomination.
Understandably, every Christian denomination wants to claim it.
The Armenians also used the ledge to pull up with rope food and supplies brought to them.
Today, the ladder has lost its practical function.
It serves only as a symbol of the long-standing differences and divisions among Christians.
For others, the ladder symbolizes human stupidity than anything else.
In the ladders recent history, there has been a few attempts to move it.
In 1981 someone stole the ladder and it went missing for a short time.
In 1997, the ladder went missing for several weeks before it was found.
Photo credit:Jorge Lascar/Flickr
