Episode 3 Pilgrimage with Simon Reeve

For centuries, pilgrimage was one of the greatest adventures.

Epic journeys around the country...

You're going the wrong way. This is the Pilgrim's Way to Canterbury!

..and across the world.

'I'll be retracing the steps of our ancestors...'

It's the spot where Jesus is said to have been born.

'Exploring the hidden...'

WOODEN TAPPING

Some people might think this is quite macabre.

'And the darker side of pilgrimage.'

If something went wrong, it could lead to war.

'And discovering why so many modern pilgrims are taking to the road.'

APPLAUSE

Come on, now, that was incredible!

'My journey has taken me from the north of England to Canterbury,

'then though France into northern Spain,

'across the Alps to Italy and on to the eternal city...'

Rome!

'I'll now travel east into Turkey, across the Mediterranean,

'into the Holy Land, and on to my final destination - Jerusalem.'

It's a gob-smacker. It's a breath-taker-awayer.

The third and final part of my journey

begins at the gateway to the East - Istanbul.

I'm coming in to a city where for centuries, history,

religion and even geography have co-existed, mixed, melted together.

Sometimes collided.

It's almost a bit of a cliche, but on this side is the West -

it's Europe, it's Christianity.

On that side is the East - and it's Islam.

There are two main reasons why I'm here.

The first is that Istanbul was a major staging point

for pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land.

But the second is that Istanbul was a major destination

for pilgrimage in its own right.

For nearly 1,000 years, along with Rome and Jerusalem, Istanbul

was one of the holiest cities in the entire Christian world.

I really love this city.

Before the city was called Istanbul, it was Constantinople

and it was named after the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great,

who was a convert to Christianity.

He moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome, east

to here, so this wasn't some dusty exotic outpost of Rome.

This was the capital of the Roman Empire. The Christian Roman Empire.

And it's here where in many ways,

the story of Christian pilgrimage begins.

Not with Constantine, but with his mother.

So this is Helena.

Helena is absolutely key to the story of pilgrimage.

She was one of the very first Christian pilgrims,

and she really helped to define pilgrimage as well.

She went on a number of holy missions to the Holy Land,

sent there by her son,

and she brought back any number of relics from there.

She also helped to identify key religious sites.

At some point, in Constantinople, there was said

to be hundreds of relics, including a piece of the true cross -

the cross on which Jesus was crucified.

All sorts of souvenirs, if you like, but relics, which had a holy power.

And that drew hundreds of thousands of Christian pilgrims

to Constantinople over the centuries that followed.

MUSLIM CALL TO PRAYER

Christian pilgrimage to Constantinople wasn't

destined to last.

Another religion swept through the Middle East.

HE SINGS CALL TO PRAYER

Constantinople came under Islamic control in 1453,

becoming part of the mighty Ottoman Empire.

Many churches were destroyed, but one was so spectacular that

rather than being torn down, it was converted into a mosque.

It's called Hagia Sophia.

I think it's one of the most magnificent buildings in the world.

Hagia Sophia has a massive dome that seems to float

high above the ground.

Designed by two Greek scientists and employing

craftsman from across the known world, it was completed in 537AD.

For 1,000 years, no other building had a floor space

so vast under one roof.

In today's money, it cost more than £2 billion.

But it only took five years to build.

Imagine the planning required that would be needed today.

It's a stirring sight, and housed here were some of the relics

that Helena is said to have brought back from her travels,

including the true cross and the crown of thorns.

The building was an extraordinary destination for Christian travellers,

unmatched almost anywhere in the world.

So this is a magnificent and very detailed mosaic showing Jesus,

the Virgin Mary and St John the Baptist.

It's a Christian mosaic of course but it wasn't destroyed

when this building was turned into a mosque.

It was hidden away and now it's revealed

and I suppose it shows something of the complicated

history of this building and also the city as well.

Continually at the centre of a religious tug of war, today the

Hagia Sophia is neither officially a mosque nor a church, but a museum.

Minia Actogon has been bringing tour groups to

Hagia Sophia for more than 30 years.

Coming here now to a place of pilgrimage,

the people I see here now in large numbers, I see them as tourists.

I see them as pilgrims.

-Do you?

-Yes.

Why? They look like tourists.

Because we're all searching for something,

and I think that most people leaving this shrine...

will they remember the columns?

Will they remember anything about the architecture?

Probably not, but they will remember how good they felt here.

They'll take away, I think,

certainly a sense of an enormous beautiful space.

And peace in this space,

and that's all I think we're searching for - peace.

-It's a rock on which our future is built, perhaps.

-Fantastic.

-You like that?

-I didn't think of that. I thank you.

I just had that thought. I offer that one up.

There's a great story actually about a pagan Ukrainian prince who

was thinking of converting to either Judaism, Christianity or Islam,

so he sent out his minions to investigate the religions further.

And they came here to Istanbul on a sort of pilgrimage I suppose,

and they visited Hagia Sophia.

Then they reported back that entering this building they felt

like they were in heaven, and so the prince converted to Christianity,

so did Ukraine, and ultimately, apparently, so did Russia.

Never underestimate the power of a building like this to inspire

and evoke incredibly strong feelings.

As well as once being a destination of

Christian pilgrimage in its own right,

Istanbul's location has meant that it's always been a major crossroads

for European pilgrims heading east to the Holy Land of Jerusalem.

It's still exotic here now,

and of course it was exotic in the past as well.

For medieval pilgrims, many leaving Europe for the first time,

this must have felt like another world.

A mysterious land where people did things that seemed entirely

ridiculous, like washing.

Just a little bit apprehensive about this.

Get yourself down.

MAN SPEAKS TURKISH

Stop shouting.

SIMON LAUGHS

I'll turn over.

In medieval Europe, public bathing and washing generally had

gone into marked decline since the era of the Roman baths.

Partly because of Christian concerns... Whoa!

..about public nudity.

But then when the pilgrims started coming en masse through...

Whoa! ..Constantinople, and the Near East,

they rediscovered the joys of public bathing and

re-introduced it to Europe.

So, in a sense, pilgrimage didn't just involve

the spreading of religious ideas, but very practical ones as well.

'This is perhaps the closest I've come on my travels

'to a true act of penance.'

If it hurts it must be good, right?

On my journey so far, I'd seen how a desire to get closer to saints

and holy artefacts created a network of pilgrimage sites.

Places like Canterbury, Santiago in Spain, Rome, and even Istanbul.

But there's one destination above all others that for centuries

has inspired pilgrims to venture on often distant, perilous journeys.

It's where the story of Christianity began - the Holy Land.

I've never been and I'm thrilled to be going.

The place names are all so familiar to me

as someone who was brought up as a Methodist.

The Sea of Galilee, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth.

I'm very excited to be heading in that direction, but also

there's a degree of trepidation as well, of course, because that

patch of land is still the most hotly contested on the planet.

In the past, pilgrims leaving Istanbul for the Holy Land,

would most likely have travelled by boat across the Mediterranean.

Today, a direct ferry isn't an option, so I took a flight

to the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, but I still wanted to get a sense

of what our ancestors might have experienced when they arrived here.

So here we are. This is it!

I'm not great at sea,

so I don't find it hard to imagine the relief pilgrims would have

felt in the past, arriving here on a dirty cramped boat

and seeing the firm ground of the Holy Land for the first time.

Over here is the modern, bustling city of Tel Aviv,

but I'm heading over here to the ancient port city of Jaffa.

That's where Jonah is supposed to have left

when he went for his unfortunate encounter with a whale.

This place has got serious history.

British pilgrims first began arriving in the Holy Land

in large numbers more than 1,000 years ago,

but this has rarely been an easy place to visit.

From the 11th to the 13th centuries, Catholic Europe launched

the crusades to seize Christianity's holiest sites from Islamic control.

Only the most adventurous of pilgrims would have stepped

foot here back then.

Fewer still came following the Reformation of the 16th century,

after which the new Protestant Church discouraged pilgrimage.

In fact, it wasn't until the 1800s

when the Victorian passion for travel and exploration

reignited British interest in what was then called Palestine.

Some pilgrims arriving here for the first time were a bit

underwhelmed by what they found.

One Victorian traveller writing in the 1860s thought that Jaffa

was rather disgusting and he wrote about how he saw cats and dogs

lying dead on the streets, and dung hills outside people's homes.

The person who was largely responsible for getting Brits

back to the Holy Land was this man - Thomas Cook!

Like many Victorians, he was a deeply devout religious Christian,

and he had a burning desire to come here to the Holy Land,

which he eventually did, and the result was this book.

Cook's Tourist Handbook To Palestine And Syria. Published in 1876.

There's a passage in the book that I think sums up

the motivation for many Victorian pilgrims.

It says, "We still experience a sort of patriotism for Palestine

"and feel that the scenes enacted there were

"performed for the whole family of man.

"Narrow as are its boundaries, we have all a share in its possession.

"What a church is to a city, Palestine is to the world."

Of course the Holy Land has changed somewhat

since Cook wrote his guide book.

Then it was part of the crumbling Islamic Ottoman Empire.

Now it's an area carved up by religion and politics.

Leaving Jaffa, I headed for the town of Bethlehem, which lies in the

West Bank, a territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

I'm now coming up to the Israeli checkpoint.

Can't see any soldiers.

Generally, so I've been told,

they worry about you coming into Israel rather than leaving.

I'm not in the West Bank.

I'm in the West Bank!

I think one of the hardest things now for a modern pilgrim to do

would surely be to come here and ignore the political situation.

Modern guidebooks do try to explain the history of the region.

Some like to point out there was conflict

here at the time of Christ as well.

Around 2.5 million people live in the West Bank.

I met up with local guide Rafat Shamali,

one of more than 200,000 Palestinian Christians living here.

-Hello there. Simon.

-Hello, Simon.

Your first time in Bethlehem?

First time. Oh, my goodness.

That's the wall in Bethlehem.

We're talking of more than 800 kilometres of land

when it's finished.

This is my first moment I've seen the wall. The famous barrier.

It's bigger than the wall of Berlin, by the way.

Just gone past some graffiti that said, "Make hummus, not walls."

The Israelis say they built the wall as a security

barrier to prevent bombers entering Israel.

It's come to symbolise the conflict which still divides the region,

ruining lives on all sides.

Goodness me.

It's an image and a feeling that is completely at odds with

everything I grew up understanding and believing about Bethlehem,

about the popular image of this place.

This little town, as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

Despite the very raw politics of the region, close to 2 million

Christian pilgrims are still drawn to Bethlehem each year

to visit the site where the story of their faith began.

It's the Church of the Nativity. I can't quite believe it.

The Church of the Nativity! I'm in Bethlehem.

This is the Door of Humility, and it's a small...

Well, there's been several doors over the...

I was going to say over the years, but over the centuries.

You can see the archway just here where the door used to be

much larger. Anyway...

It's now tiny so that you can't ride in here on horseback and whoever

you are, president, king or queen, you've got to duck when you go in.

A Christian church has stood here for almost 1,700 years.

The original church,

largely destroyed in a fire in the 6th century,

was commissioned by Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine,

over the site where Jesus was believed to have been born.

There is, of course, some dispute

over whether this was actually the site

of his birth, as there is dispute over almost everything relating to

the life and works of Jesus Christ.

But nonetheless, this is where people say, think,

and are brought to, as his birth. And...

I feel it actually. I'm really feeling it.

Maybe it's just the sense that this is where humanity has decided,

this is the spot.

That's all that really matters. At least to me at the moment.

In a crypt beneath the church is that spot.

It marks a birth that is celebrated each year

by an estimated 2.2 billion Christians around the world.

WORSHIPPERS SING

This is the place where Jesus was born.

This is where he lay in a manger.

I'm definitely touched by this in a way that

I, as a non-religious person, wouldn't expect to be.

I'm taken back to my childhood, to a time, a happy family time,

unwrapping presents and the Christmas tree,

and our own nativity scene.

So as a...

My lip is... My jaw is wobbling away.

I suppose this is as much about childhood and the innocence of it.

MAN SINGS

My innocence anyway.

Don't cry, Simon. Cry, Simon.

Suddenly feeling very, very emotional.

Still, even at this point,

I feel very British and I don't want to push in.

This was one of the very first shrines built

specifically for Christian pilgrimage.

It's now part of a network of sites that inspire modern pilgrims

to journey around the world.

So we pray at the places where the heroes of our faith either

were born or died or did something significant.

I've never heard anybody describe it like that.

-The heroes of our faith.

-Yes. Yes, yes.

Are you doing the religious equivalent of those

Hollywood bus tours where they take you around and show you...

that's where Demi Moore lives, or that's where Michael Jackson died?

Is it... I'm not trying to dismiss it, but do you,

is it similar to that, do you think?

It's similar to that in the way where, sure, we're seeing these

places where people lived, but they don't change history.

Whereas Jesus, he changed history.

On my travels through the Holy Land,

I was following Thomas Cook's 1876 guide.

Like the pilgrims I'd just met, he was a man on a holy mission,

and although over 12,000 Victorians signed up for his tour,

he never made a profit.

He believed it was his Christian duty to bring pilgrims to the

land of the Bible.

Heading out of Bethlehem, I ventured deeper into the West Bank.

The desert!

It crops up again and again in the Bible,

both in the Old and New Testament.

Of course, this is where Jesus came to fast for 40 days and 40 nights.

And it's a place where pilgrims have often been drawn to

because they think it's a place where they can be closer to God.

Thomas Cook brought his pilgrims out here, deep into the desert.

They came to visit the 6th century Christian Monastery of Mar Saba,

where a community of monks live an isolated life of prayer

and devotion in this bleak and forbidding landscape.

My book has it beautifully here.

"The convent of Mar Saba is in the midst of grand and wild scenery.

"Utterly barren and desolate. It is a lofty, and gigantic structure.

"Built in terraces,

"in a kind of amphitheatre in the side of a mountain.

"Whether viewed from without or within, it's one of the most

"weird places in the world, and it's difficult to distinguish

"which is the natural rock, and which the building upon it."

Few modern visitors,

let alone TV crews are ever allowed inside the monastery.

It's no surprise this place is so wary of outsiders.

Over its 1,500 year history, it's been caught up in crusades

and countless Persian raids, and yet somehow it's managed to survive.

Just seen inside their first chapel here,

which dates back more than 1,500 years.

They weren't too... They didn't want us to film in there.

They very rarely show visitors in there,

but it's an extraordinary place.

It's a cave but it's also a shrine and in there,

there are dozens of skulls of priests and monks who were victims

of the various invaders who've come through here over the years.

Very moving. Quite upsetting, actually.

The power of faith.

The power of religion,

but a reminder of course for the monks who are here now

of their part in the history of this extraordinary building.

Evening, Father.

'Today there are 15 monks at Mar Saba.

'They live almost entirely off the land with little

'contact from the outside world.'

I brought this food out for them to eat.

Oh, my goodness.

It's nice. It's from our field.

That's very kind.

-You want?

-Yes. Thank you.

Father Nicholas first came to the Holy Land as a pilgrim,

before he entered the Greek Orthodox Church.

Do you feel very connected to that history? To those 1,500 years?

We do feel, yes. We are connected.

Even we want it or not, we are.

For many people it's like a jail but for us it's like a paradise.

Something very strong.

Is it the location that gives you a closer connection with God?

Yes.

Or is it the location and your relative isolation?

The isolation helps, because the...

We have many things to deal with in the world, you know?

Especially television and these things. Mix you up.

We live cluttered lives now.

Yes. We cannot go left and right, so we go up.

We meet the heaven.

HE CHUCKLES

WOODEN TAPPING

He's calling the monks for evening prayer, which is

also a sign that it's time for us to leave.

Unlike other monasteries on my journeys,

Mar Saba doesn't offer accommodation for pilgrims.

The same was true when Victorian travellers came here.

With only two proper hotels in the Holy Land -

both in Jerusalem -

British visitors who came here during the 1800s

often slept under canvas in a Bedouin-style camp-site.

This feels a bit touristy.

PHONE RINGS

Even out here you can get a cellphone signal.

Victorian pilgrims hardly went for the authentic experience either,

preferring to take a little bit of Britain wherever they went.

Here's a picture, a photograph, of a long table set here with some

rickety little stalls next to it, but it's got a clean white

tablecloth on, and some silver candlestick holders.

These tours weren't cheap.

They could cost £12,000 in today's money, which is a lot now,

but then, given the average wage was next to nothing,

was a king's fortune.

So when we look back on that time as being,

as some people do, as being the sort of golden age of travel,

when servants were aplenty and there were distant lands to explore,

it was only the very rich who could do it.

Now, in my humble view, is the golden age of travel, when ordinary

folk can travel around the world and have extraordinary experiences that

our ancestors could only have dreamt of,

unless they were rich, of course.

That's not too bad. The pillow is a bit hard.

Like a rock. But I've slept on worse.

HE GROANS

Not the finest night's sleep.

There were cats.

There were dogs poking around. Coming and having a sniff of me.

I woke up at one point and there was a donkey coming into the tent.

Ah!

Thomas Cook's tours helped to pioneer modern tourism,

and although his trips to the Holy Land were largely designed

for pious Victorians,

there are destinations within his guide that have little

to do with conventional pilgrimage, like taking a dip in the Dead Sea.

I've always wanted to do this.

The sea is so salty that visitors can supposedly float under

the blinding sun.

Oh! They don't lie!

So the book says, "Bathing in the Dead Sea -

"every traveller should try the curious effect

"of bathing in the Dead Sea, unless he is suffering from an

"abrasion of the skin, in which case he would suffer excruciating pain."

Open wounds and salt water not really mixing.

It's fascinating because what this says to me, very clearly,

is that for Victorian pilgrims, just as with medieval pilgrims,

for example, going on pilgrimage was not purely a religious act.

It was not just for the pious.

It was for those seeking adventure and experiences.

It was during the Victorian era when the line between pilgrim

and tourist really started to blur.

Now, with cheap flights bringing millions to the Holy Land,

some travellers who come here are shying away from crowded

churches and shrines in search of more personal experiences

they can have in the land of the Bible.

I headed north to Galilee and Nazareth.

My first stop in this region was the modern pilgrimage

destination of Yardenit on the banks of the River Jordan.

More than half a million pilgrims travel here each year to the

spot where some believe Jesus came to be baptised.

We thank you for today.

We thank you for the opportunity to be in the Jordan River.

INDISTINCT SPEECH

Wow.

I baptise my sister in the name of the Father and of the Son

and of the Holy Spirit, buried in the lightness of the...

'The modern day John the Baptist here is Pastor Todd Horton.

'He can be called out at 20 minutes' notice to perform the ceremony.'

Good!

Are you baptising pilgrims here, or tourists,

or a combination of the two?

Oh, it depends. Like, I've got someone coming in Wednesday.

Specific. He's like, "I need to be immersed."

But they come in all shades and colours.

Some people didn't plan it and they get here and they're like,

"Listen, I need to be immersed."

Have you come here to the Holy Land as a pilgrim or as a tourist?

How do you define a tourist?

Well, a tourist is someone who's touring, if you like,

and travelling around.

I've travelled in Asia as well, and I'd say that can be

a pilgrimage too, just taking time out to stop and reflect.

Goodness of people, the wonder of nature. All of that.

That's a pilgrimage.

I suppose it's up to the individual to define it.

What's a pilgrim? It's a perfect who's searching for faith.

Just a few hundred yards from Yardenit,

the River Jordan flows into the Sea of Galilee.

It's beautiful.

Sorry to make a statement of the bleeding obvious now and again.

There's a magnificent passage in the book here.

"Upon those waters he trod.

"Those waves listened to his voice and obeyed.

"Everywhere the gospel is written upon this divinely illuminated page

"of nature, and the very air seems full of the echo of his words."

It's poetry.

They do not write guidebooks like this any more.

As a devout Christian, Thomas Cook was passionate about this land

and wanted his fellow Britons to re-engage with it.

In the 150 years since he wrote his first guide,

tourism and pilgrimage to the Holy Land has boomed.

Here in the Galilee, Christians come to visit the place where

Jesus preached and where four of his disciples are believed to

have earned a living as fishermen.

At dawn the next morning, I joined local fishermen

Israel and Amnon as they went out to check their nets.

THEY SPEAK EXCITEDLY

-Fish!

-Yeah!

These gentlemen get very excited for people who fish all the time.

-Big fish. Goody!

-Goody. OK.

'What Israel and Amnon are really after is St Peter's fish,

'a native species that would have been eaten by Christ

'and his disciples.'

So will tourists who are eating in a restaurant,

will they actually specifically order a

St Peter's fish because it's a biblical fish,

because it's a fish Jesus might have eaten?

Why?

The number of pilgrims coming to the Holy Land is increasing,

and demand for St Peter's fish is at an all-time high.

Most of the fish have gone. Why have most of the fish gone?

Well, as they've said, too many fishermen,

but also because so many people are coming here,

and they want to eat the way Jesus would have eaten.

It's extraordinary really.

I think there's a profound shift here that I'm maybe noticing,

which is that in the past,

people would have come to the Holy Land to visit the holy sites.

Now they're almost trying to immerse themselves in the life of Jesus,

the life of the Bible.

They don't just want to pray. They want to have an experience.

Just a short distance away, in the town of Nazareth,

some visitors to the Holy Land are taking that desire to immerse

themselves in biblical life to the extreme.

People like David Hull.

-David.

-You must be Simon.

-Simon.

-Right this way.

-David...

-Yeah?

-Why are you dressed like that?

Here in Nazareth Village we try to approximate as best as we can

what it would be like to live in 1st century Nazareth.

As far as what we wear, as far as the tasks we do, everything is about

being as close to the 1st century and the time of Jesus as possible.

Why?

My own path was very self-centred and led me to the point of death.

Overdose and drugs. I was actually dying in the hospital.

Look at you now.

Yeah. Little bit heavier. Little bit healthier.

It led me from wearing pants to wearing a dress every day.

It's crazy. It's kind of fantastic. SIMON LAUGHS

Nazareth village is surrounded by the hustle and bustle

of the modern town, but here,

David tends to sheep, goats and donkeys.

Your donkeys are out of control, mate.

I definitely think it's your responsibility to...

Nah, they're just playing. Two little boys.

-It does for me feel a little bit like I'm on a film set.

-Yeah.

But I actually feel out of place.

So it must be working then.

That's fantastic. We can get you one of these if you'd like.

Could do the rest with you walking around in some traditional garment.

Just looking at Chris the director, who smiled all excitedly.

THEY LAUGH

There are traditional 1st century buildings here too,

complete with a carpenter's workshop.

And is this, as far as is known,

something that is vaguely historically accurate?

Yeah, everything here has been researched by a team of scholars

and archaeologists.

'Visiting Nazareth Village is a strange experience.

'At first it feels like a historical theme park,

'until you realise that the main performers aren't all actors.'

-You're Hannah, the weaver.

-I'm Hannah the weaver.

Well, it's very nice to see you, Hannah.

The weaver of the village here.

'This is pilgrimage as I've never seen it before.'

Goodness me. What are we doing?

We're shearing a sheep.

-Shearing a sheep?

-Yeah.

-He's going to hold the legs.

-Am I?

Yep.

Sure can.

David, what do you learn about biblical life from doing this?

It teaches me the biblical life isn't pie in the sky.

That it's dirt and sweat and blood

and that it isn't separate from real life.

This feels absolutely surreal to me, but timeless as well.

You'll be glad to have it off.

-It's too hot to have all this.

-Whoa!

-It's all right. It's OK.

I think for me this looks immersive and interesting

and like an exciting experience for a time.

-I'm not sure how long I could...

-Yeah.

-..keep it up.

I think that's the point of pilgrimage, right?

Because it means all life is an adventure.

It means that there's no final destination.

It means that I get to grow and learn and shear sheep

and chase donkeys and climb mountains and explore rainforests...

until the day that I die.

-Good luck on your travels, David.

-Thank you.

Throughout my journey,

I've seen how people's definition of pilgrimage can vary.

For some it's about connecting to Christianity through

the natural landscape of the Bible.

For others it's about a connection with God through the small

patches of ground where holy acts were performed.

But there's one place that unites all Christians, and has been

a magnet for pilgrims from the very birth of the religion itself...

There it is. Look.

Oh, my goodness.

Jerusalem.

I can't quite believe I'm here.

This is a city the like of which does not exist anywhere

else on the planet Earth.

A city that's holy for Christianity, but for Judaism and Islam as well.

What must the travellers of our past have thought?

They would have got here after long, difficult,

dangerous journeys across the continent, travelling

thousands of miles by land and sea and then finally to arrive.

It's a gob-smacker, it's a breath-taker-awayer.

We simply don't know how many of our medieval ancestors made it

all the way to the epicentre of Christian pilgrimage,

but there are some clues to Jerusalem's popularity.

In Chaucer's fictional account, the Canterbury Tales,

written in the late 1300s, the lusty Wife of Bath is

described as having travelled here no less than three times.

There's another book to show you here.

This is the book of Margery Kempe,

and Margery Kempe is an extraordinary woman, who in

the 1400s visited almost all of the major sites of Christian pilgrimage.

In truth, I haven't really known where to tell you about her, because

she's been almost everywhere that I've been on these journeys.

Except she went in the 1400s,

travelling around the world on pilgrimage.

She had adventures 600 years ago that women today in many

parts of the world would be unable to have.

According to her own account, Margery Kempe was so filled

with holy awe in Jerusalem, that she kept falling to the ground in

a series of dramatic fainting fits, accompanied by wild religious rants.

Psychiatrist Dr Moshe Kalian

believes that she may have been suffering from Jerusalem Syndrome -

a condition that he treats on a regular basis today.

Many people consider Jerusalem, spiritually,

as the centre of the world.

They use Jerusalem as a stage where they perform their act.

So these are people who are drawn magnetically almost to

-Jerusalem and...

-Yes, more or less because they believe that this is

the place where they should deliver their message to humanity.

-There are people now in the city...

-Definitely.

..who think of themselves as the new messiah?

They come, they live in some hostel or in some hotel.

If they have means, sometimes they find some work to

provide themselves and they're waiting for the day to come.

What, so they'll be working in a shop or something,

meanwhile telling all their colleagues, by the way, I'm...

-Could be.

-..I'm the son of God?

-Mm-hmm.

-Extraordinary.

-Yep. Yep.

How many patients have you treated with Jerusalem Syndrome?

It's not a big number.

I think it's, like, sometimes between 20 to

let's say, for the most, 50 people a year.

-A year?

-Yeah, because people are...the 50...

-That's nearly one a week!

-Yeah.

Yes.

The power and pull of this city and this land cannot be underestimated.

The experiences of Victorian pilgrims,

thousands of whom came on Cook's tour,

helped to revive and shape British interest in the Holy Land.

And by the early 1900s Britain had enormous power across this region.

Everywhere you look in Jerusalem

there are signs of the British influence and legacy.

Visits to the Holy Land encouraged

senior figures in the British establishment,

including Arthur Balfour - Edwardian Prime Minister

and later Foreign Secretary - to support a religious movement

called Christian Zionism.

Followers believed in a biblical prophecy that

if the Jewish people return to the Holy Land, it would start a

chain of events that would culminate in the second coming of the Messiah.

Their beliefs, forged for many by pilgrimage to the Holy Land,

led in part to the Balfour Declaration.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 gave official British approval

for the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people.

This was the result of pilgrimage at its most political

and it's left a lasting legacy to this day.

The status of Jerusalem is at the heart of

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,

but millions of Christians, Jews and Muslims still

come here every year to worship in the holy sites of the Old City.

It's an area of just over a square mile that's one of the most

contested and controlled patches of land on the planet.

I was allowed to see inside the eyes of the city where

I met up with British-born Israeli police spokesman,

Superintendent Micky Rosenfold.

Wow.

-Here we are.

-So, Micky. This is, this is your, well, command centre.

Yep, and the most important aspect, as far as we're concerned,

is making sure that the status quo is kept

and is guarded in the best way possible

with the eyes of the 320 cameras that are watching over

in and around the Old City.

And here we have our co-ordinating officer, who as you can see

on the map over here, we can see the different cameras.

That are located in and around the Old City.

I mentioned 320 cameras. The cameras are facing in different directions.

-Right.

-So this is the Church of the Sepulchre as we see it on the map.

-So the holiest site in Christendom, right?

-In Christian religion.

So we're now on camera 69, which we can see next to us

on the larger screen.

And this is in fact the Church of the Sepulchre entrance itself.

-Goodness me.

-And we can see exactly what is going on.

We can now switch over to the Western Wall

and the holiest site to the Jewish communities.

And we can see it's relatively quiet at the moment.

-This is the holiest site...

-Holiest site.

-For Jews in the world.

-In the world where we're watching.

In just a flick of a button you go from one faith...

Touch of a screen. And also, from where we are...

We can now go from the men's section to the women's section

and see how many women are praying,

what's going on at the Western Wall itself.

It's as live as it's taking place right now.

And by the touch of a button,

we can look at the third most holy site...

in the Muslim world - The Temple Mount itself -

and all the movements that are taking place.

You have responsibility for protecting sites where,

if something went wrong, it could lead to...

it could lead to war.

It could lead to a major, major situation in the Middle East.

We have to be very careful, especially with crowd control

and making sure that everyone is on time for prayers,

whether it's Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish.

The prayers take place at specific times

and therefore we have to make sure that everyone is there on time.

I've walked small sections along some of the holiest

Christian pilgrimage trails in the world now.

To Canterbury, along the Pilgrims' Way.

To Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain,

but I'm now joining perhaps the holiest of them all.

I was on my way to the start of the Via Dolorosa - the Way of Sorrow.

It's the route that Jesus is said to have taken

while carrying his cross through the city to the site of his crucifixion.

Every Friday afternoon,

Franciscan monks lead a procession along the 600 yard route.

This is the Second Station Of The Cross

where Jesus received the cross and then he began to walk...

MONKS SING

Which I'm about to do. I won't be on my own.

As we all made our way through the narrow streets,

I kept catching glimpses of a man dressed in biblical robes.

He's an American called James,

who's been living in Jerusalem for the past six years.

Forgive me for asking, but given what you're wearing

it's perhaps a natural question, but are you...

do you consider yourself a chosen person or are you

a person of ordinary faith? Or are you a...

-Well, I don't think faith is ordinary.

-A disciple, prophet or...?

I don't, you know, I avoid exalted titles

because that's the assumption.

Oh, he must think he's something, you know, something unique, special.

You're not one of the people who think they might be the son of...?

-Jerusalem Syndrome?

-Yes.

-No, actually.

-OK.

THEY SING

Walking the allies of the Via Dolorosa is a strange experience.

It's like a channel continually streaming Christian pilgrims

of every type and nationality to the heart of their faith.

THEY SING

We are from Nigeria, but we live in London.

Jesus, we love you.

Are you having the experience you expected?

Are you feeling you're on the Via Dolorosa?

Oh, yeah, definitely. Oh, yes. Yeah, the spirit.

The spirit of the Lord is here, and we know we can feel it.

I feel my spirits lifted a bit

by the joy of some of the pilgrims we've met.

Although I don't know where on earth I'm going at this point,

I'm enjoying it.

And which way is it?

I know a man who'll know!

Just right up here.

At the end of the Via Dolorosa is the main attraction.

It's drawn pilgrims here from around the world.

It's the place that has inspired countless Britons across the

centuries to risk their lives on a perilous 2,000 mile journey.

And here it is.

The culmination of every Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land

for hundreds of years.

Medieval Britons in particular believed

that in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,

the gap between Heaven and Earth was at its thinnest.

A place of unlimited power,

where bodies could be healed and sins cleansed.

This is everything we've heard about medieval pilgrims doing.

People praying directly onto the stone where Jesus was said to

have been laid after he was crucified.

People rubbing their hands, their bits of cloth, to gain holy power.

Here, in the holiest site of Christianity,

you see the final proof that we are just like our ancestors.

It was here that the Roman Empress Helena claimed to have found

the true cross, and where she built a church to be

a beacon of Christianity throughout the world.

At the centre of the church is Christianity's

holiest of holies -

the tomb where Jesus is said to have risen from the dead.

I feel my hands, my nails, gripping in.

I feel quite tense being here.

This is the holiest site in the holiest shrine

in the whole of Christianity.

This is the cave where Jesus was placed after his death on the cross.

It's where he rose again and became Christ and Christianity was born.

This is the birth of a culture, of a civilisation.

So many paintings, so much music, so much joy, so much suffering.

So many wars. So much of human history comes from here.

It's utterly overwhelming.

I've come to the end of my journey. It's been fascinating.

I've learnt so much about the value of pilgrimage for a believer.

About the adventure, the excitement, the joy,

but even for a non-believer

I think pilgrimage has so much going for it.

It offers a very real sense of purpose and achievement.

So go on.

Follow our ancestors to somewhere holy

and learn about the history and the culture that shaped us.

Or strike out on your own. Find your own Jerusalem.