From the Christian Quarter along Sharia Abi al-Hawl, continue due east, straight over the crossroad, until you see a small gateway topped by a cross - this leads through a grey stone wall to the Church of the Girdle of Our Lady . In 1953 the patriarch of Antioch, Ignatius Aphraim, declared a delicate strip of woven wool and silk, found in the church six months earlier, to be a girdle worn by the Virgin Mary.
The story is that it had survived intact since the ascension of Mary into heaven, preserved in one container or another in a church on this spot. The church is an attractive little grey-stone building with a red pantile roof, and is still an active centre for Syrian Orthodox worship.
