Calvary or Golgotha /ˈɡɒlɡəθə/, was according to the Gospels, a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus was crucified. Golgotha is the Greek transcription in the New Testament of an Aramaic term that has traditionally been presumed to be Gûlgaltâ (but see below for an alternative). The Bible translates the term to mean place of [the] skull, which in Greek is Κρανίου Τόπος (Kraníou Tópos), and in Latin is Calvariae Locus, from which the English word Calvary is derived.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, or the Church of the Resurrection by Eastern Christians, is a church within the Christian Quarter of the walled Old City of Jerusalem. It is a few steps away from the Muristan.
The site is venerated as Golgotha (the Hill of Calvary), where Jesus was crucified, and is said also to contain the place where Jesus was buried (the Sepulchre). The church has been a paramount – and for many Christians the most important – pilgrimage destination since at least the 4th century, as the purported site of the resurrection of Jesus. Today it also serves as the headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, while control of the building is shared between several Christian churches and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for centuries. Today, the church is home to Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Anglican, Nontrinitarian and Protestant Christians have no permanent presence in the church – and some regard the alternative Garden Tomb, elsewhere in Jerusalem, as the true place of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection.