Garo Nalbandian

The Chapel of St. Helena where, according to tradition, Queen Helena in 326 A.D. found the true cross. The chapel is now at the bottom of a stairway at the eastern end of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In Crusader times, the chapel was a large cistern used for water storage. Before the Crusaders, nothing had been built here to commemorate Queen Helena’s finding of the true cross; therefore, the tradition is most likely a late one, probably of the 11th century A.D.