Model of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher

Throughout the early modern period, Palestinian craftsmen based in Bethlehem created detailed models of the holy sites of Christianity, among them, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and that of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. These luxurious objects were made with precious local materials, such as exotic woods, mother-of-pearl from shells from the Red Sea, and camel bone and were intended as gifts from the Custody for important donors. The representations of these churches, accurate even in their interiors (the models can be opened, like a dollhouse), also served to show what these buildings looked like to a European audience for whom travel to the Holy Land would have been difficult before the nineteenth century.