HERITAGE

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HERITAGE

The year is 1875. The ship that sailed at dawn from the Port of Beirut approaches the shores of Jaffa. Their faces wind-swept and flushed with excitement, dozens of pilgrims crowd the deck: Russian Orthodox, German Templers, French nuns and Italian magnates, even Mormon missionaries from the distant United States, all swept up by the wave of religious revival that beset the Christian world at the end of the 19th century. Murmuring to one another in a medley of languages, gripped by the mysterious allure of the Levant, on this spring morning they will ascend to the holy city—better known as the City of Jaffa.

One man stands out in the crowd: François Guinet, a wealthy businessman from Lyon. What did he see as he gazed out from the ship’s bow that day? A French tourist who had almost died of malaria on a recent visit to Beirut, and lost two friends to the disease—what picture did he behold on the sandstone banks that sloped into the sea? The walls of the Old City. Rooftops and palm trees. Church towers and minarets. And swamps, everywhere he looked: sprawling stretches of shallow, dingy water in a murky shade of tea-brown. Putrid ponds, reflecting back the bright blue sky in their glassy surfaces. And beyond them, the blighted ruin of Jaffa’s alleyways.

At the sight of all this, the distraught Guinet resolves to build a hostel for pilgrims making their way to Jerusalem, a shelter in Jaffa that will welcome both nobility and commoners with a meal and a soft bed. Upon his return to Paris, determined to keep his vow, he consults with his friend King Louis V and persuades him to contribute funds to the sacred undertaking.

The king dispatches his royal architects, Ribellet and Grebez, to Jaffa. Touring the area, the two men climb to the highest point in the region, which towers over the horizon from a height of 85 feet above sea level. At the summit, they shake hands with representatives of the Ottoman regime and purchase 1.2 acres of land.

The construction lasts for four years, resulting in one of the first buildings erected outside the walls of the Old City. Towering brightly above the ruins, the U-shaped building boasts an inner courtyard and two 20-feet high floors. The raw materials, as well as the blacksmiths and glaziers, are imported from France, but the aesthetics typify the Roman Renaissance: a harmony of arches and adornments, columns and stone statuettes, stained-glass windows, braided laurels and flowers made of iron. At the heart of the top floor, as if on the left side of the building’s thorax, stands a small church: a set of heavy wooden doors guards one of the most beautiful chapels in the Holyland, replete with polygonal domes and stunning mosaic windows reaching up to the top of its very high walls. A white dove glides above the altar, and high up above, the ceiling is adorned with a fresco of the star-studded night skies of Bethlehem.

In 1879, the building was dedicated in a grand ceremony. In the intervening years, it was decided that the original purpose would be expanded to include a hospital for the destitute. “The Saint Louis V Hospital,” declared Guinet in his gravelly voice, “will be open free of charge to all the people of the Holyland, regardless of their sex, religion or nationality.” People soon began to arrive from all across the land – Christians, Muslims and Jews. Their intake and treatment was overseen by the devoted Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition, and a senior physician was appointed by King Louis V. When it opened, “The St. Louis” contained forty beds, and it grew to a capacity of one-hundred and twenty. By the turn of the 20th century it was considered the most modern hospital in the region.