Hystory

​The first writing that speaks of the death and assumption of Mary into heaven is a second-century apocryphal text, the Transitus Mariae (The Passing of Mary), which sets the event on Mount Zion: the soul of Mary, after death, was said to have been taken directly to heaven by Jesus, while her body was buried; but after some time, at the insistence of the apostles, Jesus returned and had the angels open his mother's tomb, from which she emerged alive and was assumed into heaven. This is the traditional account.

However, it was only during the Crusader period that a large Basilica was erected, enclosing in a single building the traditional site of Mary's passing (the Somnium Mariae - the Sleep of Mary) and the Cenacle (the Upper Room), located near the present Basilica. The imposing Crusader building did not survive the end of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and with the return of the Muslims, it fell into ruin, and the main concern continued to be directed more towards the Cenacle than the Marian site. In 1898, the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II donated the site of Mary's Dormition to the German Emperor Wilhelm II who, at the beginning of the 20th century, had the church built by the architect Heinrich Renard; it was consecrated in 1910, and in 1957 it was granted the title of minor basilica. It was designed and built on the model of the Carolingian Cathedral of Aachen and is owned by the Benedictines, whose monastery is attached to the church. In the circular crypt of the church, a wooden and ivory sculpture depicting the Dormition of the Virgin Mary is preserved.